Wizards & Avalonians III: The Black Maidens & the Rail-Splitter
by Pyeknu
Summary: Side story to "Phoenix From the Ashes," sequel to "W&A II." A surprising discovery at Nurmengard prison unleashes a problem for Harry and his friends…and reveals a dark plot which could spell disaster for the Avalonians and wizardkind. Will the mysterious Friend of Dragons and an undying vampire hunter known in history as the Great Emancipator be able to help stave off disaster?
1. What Was Hidden in a Cave at Nurmengard

_Schloss Greifswald, near Thiessow on Rügen (120 kilometres north of Berlin), Monday 19 July 1937, late morning… _

_"Thank you for doing this for me, Gellert." _

_The handsome man with the ice blue eyes and the wavy dirty blonde hair could only smile as he reached over to gently grasp the hand of his companion as the black Mercedes-Benz 770 W07 bearing the pennants of the Schutzstaffel made its way up the gravel driveway towards the beautiful Baroque mansion house overlooking the Greifswald Bodden. As the beautiful Schwarzes Mädchen trooper — the Black Maidens were Gellert Grindelwald's personal brigade of bodyguards and a special all-female magical auxiliary to the SS (their being magical made them exempt from the Schutzstaffel's rules about recruiting women directly into the organization) — driver guided the vehicle to the front door of the manor that had been a prominent feature on Rügen for decades, the Reichsminister für Magische Angelegenheiten gently grasped the hand of the shuddering woman who served as the present Mahō-Shōgun to the Heavenly Sovereign of Japan. Unlike their driver — who was in a modified version of the midnight-black uniform of the SS — both Gellert Grindelwald and Yomigawa Tsukiko were in Western-style civilian clothes regardless that the former had been given the honorary rank of_ Obergruppenführer _in the SS by Heinrich Himmler in 1935…while the latter was an honorary_ Gensui _in the Imperial Japanese Army as appointed by the Heavenly Sovereign himself in 1929. "When you told me what had happened before you portkeyed to Berlin, Tsukiko, I only felt it proper," he stated in German; his current companion was fluent in the native language of the Reich. _

_Hearing that reassurance from her host, Tsukiko smiled as she gave the current master of the Elder Wand a warm squeeze with her hand, even if her onyx black eyes were still misty with tears she wouldn't publicly shed. "Have you had any chance to convince_ Freiherr _von Taserich in supporting the Führer's cause?" she then wondered. _

_"I've tried," he said with a wry chuckle as the car came to a stop. _

_The driver got out to open the door for her master before trotting over ahead of him to open the other door and allow the visiting supreme sorceress from Kyūshū — already, many of her critics in the International Confederation of Wizards were calling her the "Dark Lady of the Orient" for her open, passionate support of magical freedom fighters who were struggling to overthrow the domination of colonial magical ministries all over southern and southeastern Asia, not to mention most of Africa — to disembark. Offering his arm to her — which she took — Gellert smiled as he escorted Tsukiko up the front steps to politely knock at the main doors. They soon opened to reveal an elderly man in a formal servant's uniform. "The_ Freiherr _is awaiting you and your guest in his drawing room, Minister Grindelwald," he announced to Gellert before formally bowing to Tsukiko. "Generalissima Yomigawa, welcome to Schloss Greifswald. Please follow me." _

_"Thank you," Gellert stated with a polite nod in return as Tsukiko returned that bow. _

_The driver assumed a relaxed at-ease pose by the car as the senior magicals stepped into the interior of the lodge. Once inside, Tsukiko blinked in surprise on seeing how SIMPLE the decor in this beautiful mansion was in comparison to the other great lodges across the German-speaking lands of Europe she had seen. While there were paintings and other forms of art like statues, it wasn't in obnoxiously overwhelming qualities, not like several other such palaces Tsukiko had seen in previous visits to Germany. As they ascended to the second floor, the Mahō-Shōgun breathed out, "Um…" _

_The butler lightly smiled from behind his thick moustache. "The_ Freiherr _doesn't care for such useless frivolities,_ Frau _Generalissima," he calmly stated as they walked down a hallway towards a pair of doors. "Not like Ministerpräsident Göring for example." _

_Hearing that statement, Gellert smirked. When he became Minister of Magical Affairs in 1930 under President Paul von Hindenburg shortly after he had stolen the Elder Wand from Oleg Grigorijevič Gredenko, the disgraced Drumstrang student — as he was German by birth despite his attending a_ **Norwegian** _magical school, the fact that Gellert had been expelled in 1898 didn't matter in the eyes of the noble lords of the Zauberrat when they made him Reichsmagieminister — had been invited to the homes of the governmental, business and social elite for many parties and levées. Seeing how crazy some people went to decorate their homes — especially the current Prime Minister of the Free State of Prussia and Minister of Aviation — Gellert had found himself disgusted at some of their excesses. Yes, the Führer had his odd peculiarities — he was a vegetarian, disdained alcohol of any sort and abhorred smoking — but that made him live a simple life when he wasn't parading in front of the masses. As the two worked together to force the magicals of the Reich to accept the National Socialist way, Gellert had come to respect Adolf Hitler for his audacity, love of his adopted country and determination to ensure that Germany would eventually reign supreme over Europe and the world. _

_Once that goal was achieved in the next decade or so, the master of the Elder Wand knew, it wouldn't take long to finally break down the barriers between magical and normal and allow all to embrace Gellert's vision of the Greater Good. _

_The doors to the sitting room were opened as the butler came to a stop and bowed to the master of Schloss Greifswald. "_Mein Freiherr_, Reichsmagieminister Gellert Grindelwald and the Supreme General of Magic of the Empire of Japan, Madame Yomigawa Tsukiko." _

_"Thank you. You may go." _

_A deep bow before the butler retreated from the room, closing the doors behind him. Both Gellert and Tsukiko bowed low to their host. "Thank you for your willingness to see us both,_ Freiherr_," the former then stated. "My friend here…" _

_"Has come from Japan to inform me of what just happened to Hirosuke." _

_Gellert stopped as a pair of ageless dark grey eyes focused on them, peeking out of a rather ordinary face framed by stylishly-combed black hair with long sideburns, an almost indecently-thin moustache and goatee; the man possessing those features was currently dressed in relaxed civilian clothing common for those of his personal rank and station in the Prussian aristocracy. The Reichsmagieminister relaxed himself as their host walked slowly over to stand closer to them, those ageless eyes scanning both himself and Tsukiko with a frightful intensity neither magical had honestly experienced before. Which was more than understandable, of course. While most European magicals fervently dismissed this man as some mundane fraudster — as they tended to dismiss non-magical metahumans of any stripe, especially if they were one of the ageless foundlings calling themselves "Immortals" as a group — the current master of the Elder Wand knew much differently. Josef Wilhelm_ Freiherr _von Taserich — which wasn't his birth name — was at least fifteen_ **millennia** _old by conservative estimates; when Gellert first met the man years before, Taserich had explained that he simply didn't CARE how old he was…even if he DID remember witnessing both the rise AND fall of Atlantis! _

_Given that he had ALSO supposedly created the three Deathly Hallows, enchanting them with samples of the black crystals flowing within his own blood…! _

_"Hai, Taserich-sama," Tsukiko said with a deep bow of her head, slipping into her native Japanese; she knew her friend and her host both would understand her without the need of translation spells. "It happened two days ago. I sensed it from my office in the Kōkyo, then transported myself to Watari-shima to see what was going on. There, I witnessed an immortal named Uchida Ryūsei behead Hosan-sama after he…" _

_Her voice then broke as she collapsed to her knees and began to weep. Gellert was at her side immediately, moving to comfort her. Watching her, Taserich seemed not to care at all about such an undisciplined display of emotion…before he held out his hand. A crystal of onyx-black material leapt out of Tsukiko's jacket pocket to land in his hand, which made her gasp as she stared wide-eyed at him. Looking down at the crystal for a moment, Taserich hummed. "Is this him?" he quietly asked. _

_Gellert shuddered on hearing the Arctic-level chill in that voice. He had only heard of the_ **one** _instance Taserich had displayed his personal power to magicals. This was an incident all the way back in 1878 when members of the Magische Staatspolizei tried to arrest him for "illegally" augmenting wands of normal-born freshmen students of the Nurmengard Academy with crystals drawn from his blood…which effectively boosted their owners' magic a thousand fold AND rendered them virtually invisible to any type of tracking spell like the British "Trace" system used by the local Ministry of Magic to teach normal-born children about adhering to the Statute of Secrecy. _

_The resultant fight had been brief and embarrassing to the Mastapo; all of them had been teleported back to their headquarters in Berlin stripped of almost all their magic…with a note tied to the leader warning members of the Reichsmagieministerium that any attempt at interfering in Taserich's personal affairs would result in the stripping of ALL magicals in Germany of their power. Save normal-borns, of course. _

_Naturally, officials of the Reichsmagieministerium left the man alone from then on. _

_"It is," Tsukiko flatly declared. _

_A hum escaped the older man's lips as he considered that for a moment before a sparkle of mischievousness flashed in his eyes. "Wolfram!" he called out. _

_The doors opened, revealing the butler. "_Ja, Mein Freiherr_?" _

_"Ask the young lady waiting with_ Herr _Grindelwald's car to come in." _

_The butler deeply bowed. "_Jawohl, Mein Freiherr_!" _

_He walked off. Gellert and Tsukiko exchanged a confused look as he helped her back to her feet, and then they turned as the butler came back, the Schwarzes Mädchen storm lady accompanying him. She walked smartly, her back ramrod-straight as if she was on parade. Her current master smiled on seeing that; when he had seen the Black Maidens parade before the Führer at his mountain retreat on the slopes of the Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden two years before, Gestapo director Reinhard Heydrich had jokingly asked the Reichsmagieminister if he could borrow a platoon of them to bring the regular SS troops up to SM standards. "Sturmfrau Margareta Hecht of the Schwarze Mädchen,_ Mein Freiherr_," the butler politely announced with a bow before leaving the room. _

_The newcomer snapped to attention, giving her host the Deutscher Gruß. "Heil Hitler!" _

_Taserich nodded in return; he was not a member of either the government or the Nazi Party…and he was just_ **too** _damned powerful personally to be intimidated by the sycophants who followed the "little corporal from Austria" — as some people believed the immortal often called the Führer in private conversation — in case any of them tried to confront him for his "lack of respect." "_Frau _Hecht, did_ Herr _Grindelwald tell you why he invited his lovely companion from Japan to visit me today?" he asked. _

_A nod as the green-eyed, silver-haired woman — she was twenty years old, having graduated from the Nurmengard Academy two years before — relaxed herself. "_Ja, Mein Freiherr_. Your adopted son, Master Hosan Hirosuke, died two days ago at Watari-shima, beheaded by the immortal adopted son of the founder of the Black Dragon Society. He was captured by Generalissima Yomigawa and encased in that mesonium crystal now in your hand before he could be beheaded himself by Master Hosan's last student." _

_"The Canadian who possesses that meson jewel which was buried in that mountain in the lands of the Niitsítapi over the years?" Taserich confirmed. "The one many call the 'Protector of All Life?'" At her nod, he sighed. "Follow me, all of you." _

_The others fell in behind their host as they stepped out of the drawing room. Within a minute, all were walking out onto the back lawn of Schloss Greifswald, which overlooked the bay of the same name that was nestled between the southern shore of Rügen and the mainland coast of Greifswald and the isle of Usedom off to the southeast. "You need not worry about possible Statue of Secrecy violations, Gellert," Taserich calmly explained. "Nor violation of the veil of secrecy Immortals and their Watcher friends keep over themselves all the time. The defensive fields of my home will hide anything I desire them to hide." He pointed to a rune-covered, flat-topped rock located in the middle of the yard; seeing that, Gellert was reminded of the Altar Stone at Stonehenge laid on its side. Thinking on how old his host might be, the Reichsmagieminister wondered if he had actually been there when the great open-air druid temple on England's Salisbury Plain had first been built over five thousand years before. _

_The people stopped about ten metres from the stone when Taserich held up his hand. "Put the crystal there,_ Frau _Hecht," he then bade as he indicated the stone. Margareta took the crystal and did as she was told, and then was beckoned back to stand close to her master and his companions. Taserich then gazed on Tsukiko. "If you please?" _

_The Mahō-Shōgun savagely grinned as she made a gesture with her hand. The black crystal instantly exploded, allowing an aura of energy to produce a dazed Oriental man appearing to be in his mid-twenties, dressed in a kimono-and-hakama combination. As he staggered for a second in bewildered shock, he then tried to reach for a katana…and then realized he didn't have one. Gazing at Uchida Ryūsei, Taserich nodded. _

_"Behead him,_ Frau _Hecht," he coldly ordered. _

_"_Jawohl, Mein Freiherr! **DIFFINDO!**_" _

_Uchida didn't even have a chance to cry out in fright before the Cutting Curse ripped into his neck to sever his head as cleanly as a falling guillotine blade. As his body collapsed onto the rock he had been placed on, his head dropped off to one side. Instantly, mystic energy billowed from the ground around the rock as a terrible wind began to blow around them. Lightning then lashed out from the corpse on the rock…though, since there was no Immortal close by to receive the Quickening, it just faded into the sky overhead. Small puddles close to the rock then exploded into vapour as bolts of energy slammed into them. Within a minute or so, the powerful bursts of energy emitting from the decapitated corpse finally faded into nothingness. _

_As silence fell over the grounds, Taserich sighed. "Why…?" _

_Tsukiko gazed on him. "Sir…?" _

_The older man closed his eyes as he turned and walked back towards the Schloss. _

_Watching him go, the Dark Lady of the Orient would swear on her magic and her life that she had seen actual_ **tears** _in Josef von Taserich's eyes… _

* * *

_**Wizards and Avalonians III:  
The Black Maidens and the Rail-Splitter**_  
by Fred Herriot  
A side story to _Phoenix From the Ashes_

Proofreading done by Rose1948, Rashaan Butler and Rorschach's Blot

Plot suggestion made by the DragonBard

German translations courtesy of Ralph S.

Based on _Harry Potter_, created by Joanna K. Rowling; _Ikkitōsen_, created by Shiozaki Yūji; and _Urusei Yatsura_, created by Takahashi Rumiko.

Including characters and references from _Mahō Sensei Negima_, created by Akamatsu Ken; _Forever Knight_, created by Barney Cohen and James D. Parriott; _Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter_, written by Seth Grahame-Smith; _Kōtetsu Tenshi Kurumi_, created by Kaishaku (Ōta Hitoshi and Shichinohe Terumasa); the _Dracula_ sequence of novels, created by Fred Saberhagen; _Battle Royale_, created by Takami Kōshun (as interpreted by Taguchi Masayuki and Keith Giffen); _The Guns of the South_, written by Harry Turtledove; _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_, created by Joss Whedon; and _Highlander_, created by Gregory Widen.

_Phoenix From the Ashes_ was derived from the fanfic _The Bet: Crippled_, written by Gregg Sharp. This story also contains characters and situations from the fanfic series _Urusei Yatsura - The Senior Year_, created by Mike Smith and Fred Herriot; and the _Icemaidens_ series, created by Fred Herriot.

* * *

**WRITER'S INTRODUCTION**

_This story starts after the events of_ Lost Relatives_. The teaser harkens back to the period before World War Two and the flashback scenes refer to events during the sixth year in Hogwarts and in the summer following events depicted in_ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_. Amongst magicals, the time of World War Two was when "Grindelwald's War" was fought across all of Europe…and "Tsukuyomi's War of Liberation" was fought in Asia. This story expands on the hidden societies across Earth by introducing the various types of vampires that have appeared in novels, manga and television series such as_ Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter_,_ Mahō Sensei Negima_,_ Buffy the Vampire Slayer_,_ Forever Knight _and the late Fred Saberhagen's_ Dracula _sequence…and will also include a surprise guest-star who first appeared in Part 57 of_ Phoenix From the Ashes_._

* * *

Nurmengard (three kilometres northeast of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany), the grounds of the Nurmengard Magic Academy, Tuesday 20 July 2010, after dawn…

"You're about a month late, Mac."

Hearing that from the former American Marine who had been saved by an Immortal after his legs had been blown apart by a landmine in Vietnam, Duncan MacLeod chuckled before he stood. His eyes were locked on the small, polished marble memorial located on what had been the quidditch pitch of the magical school serving the Prince-Bishopric of Münster during the years of the Holy Roman Empire…and the site of one of many world-gates that connected Earth with Mars' magical sister-planet of Nerio until 1945.

These days, little remained of the small magical village that had been here for over a millennium…save for the prison built on the grounds of the Academy at the orders of Gellert Grindelwald to house his enemies while he made war against the traditional magical societies of Europe, plus the ruins of the Nurmengard World-Gate. Since the Battle of the Gates in the afternoon of the summer solstice in 1945, small groves of trees had been planted on the grounds to help physically mask this place from normal passers-by living in and around Handorf to the east of Nurmengard, riding the trains on the Wanne-Eickel-Hamburg line that passed through the grounds from the great port city to the northeast of Münster to Herne far to the southwest, or travelling aboard ships on the Dortmund–Ems Canal west of Nurmengard which connected the industrial city that helped form the waterway's name on the banks of the Ruhr east of Herne to the beautiful seaport of Emden on the North Sea coast near the border with the Netherlands.

"Well, I couldn't get here for the actual anniversary day of David's death," Duncan admitted as Joe Dawson — who was wearing a bracelet around his left hand to protect him from the mundane-repellant charms that was used to keep this place shielded from any normal person — walked over to stand beside him. "Was busy in Seacouver…"

Dawson nodded. "Yeah, I know. Lynn told me." The elder Watcher's niece Lynn Horton was Duncan's current observer. "What the hell happened, anyway?"

"Some of Jacob Kell's friends who survived his trying to kill Connor and I came to town," the man known amongst Immortals and those who often involved themselves with the undying foundling swordsmen as the "Highlander" breathed out. "And I thought the first bunch at the turn of the millennium were bad? Still…"

The other man nodded as he gazed on the beautifully-cut piece of granite before his undying friend from Scotland. "'Schwarze Mädchen?' Who were they?"

"Wand-witch warriors who fought with Master Grindelwald to unleash a magical revolution across Europe, Master Dawson. And eventually the world," an airy voice called out from nearby. "All normal-borns. A lot of them were German and Austrian, but there was a considerable number recruited from across the Continent. Even Britain was represented; the last _Reichsführerin der Schwarze Mädchen_ herself was a Hogwarts graduate. As was her twin; she commanded the _Vierte Bataillon_. Both were from the NEWT class of 1938; they were Professor Dumbledore's best transfiguration students at the time." A sigh echoed over the grounds. "A pity their true story was never accepted after the Battle of the Gates. Then again, even if the Americans and the Soviets did much to repair the damage Master Grindelwald unleashed across Europe, the memories of that war are still too fresh in the minds of the generation that lived during that time period. The sheer destruction of all that had been in magical societies from the day the Statue came into being. The loss of all the enslaved magicals from the colonies…!"

Duncan smiled. "Would you say they're all infested with wrackspurts, Luna?"

A chuckle responded as an invisibility screen was dropped to reveal an amused Luna Lovegood. "Oh, I sometimes find myself thinking that, Highlander," the magical naturalist and newspaper reporter from County Devon mused as she walked over, her hand out to allow him to courtly kiss it. She then gazed on Dawson for a moment before she smiled in delight. "Your recordings in the Watcher Annals are quite wonderful to read, Master Dawson. Unlike the words of many of your friends, they never put me to sleep."

Dawson tried to scowl at her. "I always heard you Lovegoods were crazy…"

"Joe!" Duncan groaned out.

Luna hummed. "He appears to be infested with wrackspurts himself, I believe."

Dawson sputtered as Duncan laughed…before he slightly tensed as a powerful buzz surged through his body. Instantly on guard as his hand reached under his jacket to pull out his katana, he then jolted on feeling a soft hand grasp his arm. "This is Holy Ground, Highlander," Luna warned. "Do you wish to risk what happened to Pompeii years ago to happen here? With all the ley lines that intersect at this place?"

Duncan blinked before he relaxed himself. The first of the rules of the Game — to NEVER fight on any sort of ground that was considered holy, regardless of the faith or religion whose beliefs had sanctified such ground! — was for a good reason. It was Immortal legend that the destruction of Pompeii in 79 C.E. had been triggered when two of the undying swordsmen had fought on the grounds of a temple to Apollo on the southern slopes of Vesuvius. When one fighter had lost his head, the resultant Quickening shattered several ley lines that intersected close to the great volcano, thus unleashing a holocaust that had killed thousands…including the victor of that particular duel. "Yeah. I just hope whoever that is knows that," he mused.

"Knows what?"

The Highlander tensed, and then he smirked. "Methos."

Everyone turned as a lanky man with raven hair and hazel-brown eyes came towards them from the direction of the World-Gate site. Like Duncan MacLeod, the man known to his fellow Watchers as "Adam Pierson" had come to this place armed with his broadsword under his jacket…though he, at least, kept it hidden. "I didn't recognize you," Duncan stated as he shook the new arrival's hand. "Seems that the magic in this place hazes up our senses." He hummed. "You weren't here back in '45. How…?"

A smirk crossed Methos' face. "Davis Wisden was one of the few of us who knew who I was back then," he explained as he exchanged polite nods with Dawson and Luna. "He thought my idea of 'hiding in plain sight' was ingenious. Actually helped me along in a couple places." The oldest living Immortal sighed. "Damn shame about that Dark Quickening he went through before this went down. Still, if he hadn't gone through that, who would have allowed their head to be taken by Dean to destroy the World-Gate?"

"Yeah," Duncan stated before he tensed again. "Damn…"

"Seems to be a bit of a convention today," Methos noted before nodding over towards the imposing fortress nearby which had once housed the Nurmengard Academy and now served as the prison for one of the most feared magical Dark Lords in recent history, not to mention those of his followers who were still alive. "Wonder who came by to visit."

"Let's go find out," Duncan bade.

Everyone then headed down a worn path towards the gates of the old magical school built into the side of a volcanic monadnock that had surged up through the bedrock of the Westphalian Lowlands millions of years before. Gazing on the monastery-like tower built into the south face of Nurmengardberg, Duncan frowned on noting the small crowd of men and women gathered near the main doors, those capped with the banner that had been Grindelwald's rallying cry: **FÜR DAS HÖHERE WOHL**. Some of the people there, he quickly noted, were in magical body armour with combat holsters for their wands. Bands around their upper arms bore the flags of various European nations, America, Canada and Israel. Noting that, the Highlander nodded. _Magische Justizvollzugsanstalt Nurmengard_ — as this place was officially called in German — was under the administrative control of the International Conference of Magical Communities and not the German Federal Ministry of Magical Affairs. Such would remain in place until those incarcerated here finally died off and the grounds could be ritually cleansed properly before the land would be turned back to the control of the local magicals. No doubt, the guards here had greeted the other visiting immortals upon their arrival; normal-repelling charms had no effect on people like Duncan MacLeod and Methos…not to mention those members of a certain bioroid race that had moved to Earth five months before.

Meeting those Avalonian-Americans who had settled into Seacouver and other such places on Puget Sound had been quite hair-raising at first. Duncan had many ways of dealing with those people who got a little too snoopy when it came to investigating his life.

He had yet to devise a way to deal with a race of _**touch telepaths**_!

"Duncan! Adam!"

Both men perked on hearing the cheery voice of Amanda Darieux, and then they exchanged knowing smirks. "She was here?" Methos then wondered as a familiar blonde woman with dark brown eyes walked over from the crowd to join them.

Duncan smirked. "I didn't see her…but given that Grindelwald had moved a lot of interesting magical artifacts here during that war, it wouldn't surprise me that she was here looting it while Albus and his friends were busy trying to take the place."

"Duncan MacLeod! You wound me!" the beautiful, millennia-old Norman thief/adventurer groaned out dramatically as she stopped close to them, and then she shrugged as she winked towards Luna. "As I'm sure Selene's daughter there could tell you, I was under contract by Gringotts to retrieve many goblin-made artifacts that _Herr_ Grindelwald had gathered over the years. Made quite a bit of money out of it, too!"

"I'll bet you did," Duncan stated as he nodded politely towards Robert and Angelina de Valicourt, two of about three dozen Immortals that — in the summer of 1945, a month after the official end of the most devastating war Europe had ever seen — had gathered at Nurmengard to help the Allies deal with Grindelwald and his supporters once and for all. He was quick to spot people such as Erno Jocszak and Alicia Mackenzie, who both had Duncan's back when he blunted the charge of a regiment's worth of potion-drugged therianthropes charging through the World-Gate from Nerio — sent by Grindelwald's last ally in that war, the legendary Mage of the Beginning, to reinforce the German dark lord's faltering troops…but had actually come to help lead a conquest of Earth — that summer afternoon. If it hadn't been for David Wisden and the Black Maidens…

«Highlander…!»

He tensed on hearing that whispered voice in his mind, and then looked around. Luna was quick to see that. "Is there something wrong?" she wondered.

«Help us, Highlander…!»

Duncan blinked several times. "I heard that," Amanda noted.

"So did I," Methos stated as the other Immortals began to look around.

"That sounded like Elizabeth Gibbon," Alicia — a Slavic-looking woman despite her Scottish family name, possessing raven-black hair and deep blue eyes — said.

"The leader of the Schwarze Mädchen, Madame Mackenzie?" Luna wondered.

"Yes," Erno breathed out as he and several others came over to join the Highlander and his companions. "Elizabeth!" the raven-haired Hungarian with the goatee and moustache — he almost reminded Duncan himself of Antonius Kalas, though Erno would never have conceived of trying to expose Immortals to normals like the Roman senator's adopted son-turned-monk nearly did a decade before — barked out. "We can hear you, but we can't see you! Can you tell us where you are so we can find you?!"

«It's so cold here, Erno…!»

"How could she be still alive?!" Robert demanded. "We saw all the Black Maidens disintegrate when they poured their magic into helping destroy the World-Gate after the Life-Maker turned on Grindelwald! There was nothing left of them…!"

"Wait!" Luna said as she drew her wand. "_Revideor Elizabeth Gibbon!_"

Her wand-tip flared for a moment, and then a bolt of energy lashed out towards the west side of Nurmengardberg. "This way!" the magical naturalist bade as she raced off in the direction the beam of magic was now leading her.

Without hesitation, Duncan ran off after her…

* * *

The Avalon bioroid factory (at Lagrange Point One between the Earth and the Moon), an observation dome over Gestation Tower #98, that moment…

_**Something curious is happening now, Controller.**_

The young warrior-priestess who had become the master of the Staff of Gihan perked on hearing the central computer of the ancient battle staff speak into her mind, and then she looked up. "What has attracted your attention?" she asked.

_**It appears that a large group of magically-endowed Terran-form Avalonians are now trying to awaken themselves from a considerable amount of time in slumber.**_

Inada Mizuho perked as that sank into her mind, and then she demanded, "_**WHERE?!**_"

_**The magical prison at Nurmengard in Germany; inside a man-made cave to the west of the prison complex itself**_, the Staff of Gihan replied. _**According to what I can perceive of this location, whoever is trapped there have been there for over sixty-five years.**_

Hearing that, the only Japanese follower of Zoroastrianism — in both the dimension of her birth and this dimension where she had been literally reborn over five months before — blinked before she gazed wide-eyed at the seventeen millennia-old _Haijo-ju_'s focusing crystal. "How in the Master's Name is that even possible?!" she demanded.

_**It appears that the magical societies of Earth — at least one small element of them — were aware of the presence of the many Niphentaxian observers living on the planet at the time of the end of the Second World War. Given that such observers were given the right to possess Avalonian 'assistant observers' at that time…**_

She groaned. "Take me there!"

**_At once!_**

In a flash of light, the Shiroiwa Junior High School senior (class of 2000-2001) and her powerful weapon teleported themselves off the factory…

* * *

Nurmengard…

"Hey, Mac! What's going on here?!"

Duncan spun around, his jaw dropping. "Carl?!"

A hearty chuckle escaped Carl Robinson as he moved to give the Highlander his personal handshake, which the Scottish immortal was more than pleased to return. The dark-skinned immortal from Louisiana had just run over from the main entrance into the prison. "Friend of yours, Mac?" Amanda asked as her eyes danced up and down the former slave's well-formed body, her own eyes sparkling with considerable interest.

"A good friend, Amanda," Duncan said…before he gaped on seeing Carl's companion.

Luna was quick to recognize her. "Tsukiko-sensei!" she cried out with delight.

"How are you, Luna-chan?!" Yomigawa Tsukiko — who was dressed in her normal Shintō shrine maiden robes — said as she accepted the British magical reporter's warm embrace, and then she turned to gaze on the other immortals assembled in a group before the location Luna's tracking spell had struck on the face of Nurmengardberg. "May all of you live long and happy lives and may they be always fruitful," she then intoned. "Know that within the shrines of the Kami, you will all know peace and safety."

Sensing the earnest magical blessing behind the words the Dark Lady of the Orient just uttered, the immortals all bowed their heads in thanks. "And may you continue to fight for what is right, Lady Tsukuyomi-no-Tsukushi," Methos returned with a smile.

Tsukiko's pitch-black eyes sparkled in amused recognition. "Adam-san," she said before turning to Luna. "What's going on here, Luna-chan? I felt your spell…"

"The Schwarze Mädchen are possibly alive, Lady Tsukiko," Erno said.

The former Mahō-Shōgun of Japan stopped as her jaw dropped in shock, and then she raised her hand, whispering something in very archaic Japanese. A second later, a bolt of reddish energy lashed out at the craggy face of Nurmengardberg. Striking the rock, it expanded to create a roughly circular field of energy, which then melted into a holographic picture. What was displayed inside made everyone gape. "Oh, my God!" Carl gasped as his dark skin paled with horror. "What the hell happened to them?!"

«Carl…?»

He jolted before his jaw dropped. "Regina…?"

Luna gazed on him. "Regina Mitchell?!"

«Carl…help us…!»

He nodded. "Yeah! Probably the only normal white girl I ever really liked! Never knew she was magical!" he declared. "You hang on tight, Regina!" he then called out. "We'll get you out of…!"

"Oh, my God…!"

Eyes locked on Dawson. "What is it, Joe?" Methos demanded.

He nodded towards the image. "Those are _Avalonian gestation chambers_, Adam!"

Stunned silence fell…before a flash of energy caused everyone to blink before they gazed once more on the image Tsukiko's magic created. On seeing who had just teleported herself into the chamber lined on both sides by _hundreds_ of standing glass tubes in multiple rows, Luna gaped in stunned recognition. "It's _**her**_…!"

"Oh, Wise Master! Have mercy…!"

Everyone jolted before they looked around for the source of that voice. "Is that…?" Amanda began.

"It is she, Amanda-san," Tsukiko stated as the woman who just teleported into the cave hefted an ornate two metre-long staff with a crescent moon-shaped head, holding a crystal the size of the average adult human skull. "The mysterious '_**her**_'…"

The immortals gazed on her. "Do you know her name, at least?" Alicia asked, surprised that someone with Tsukiko's experience hadn't learned something simple like _that_.

"No one knows her name," Luna confessed. "But for the last several months, she's been appearing in magical enclaves on Earth, not to mention frequently visiting Nerio as well. She recently saved the life of Princess Poyo Rainyday of the Daemona from a rampaging griffin-dragon near Ariadne; her sister Zazie is a friend of mine. She's done much to protect magical wildlife. She's very enamoured with dragons."

Duncan grinned. "I'll bet Hagrid likes her."

"He does!" Luna asserted. "He do-…!"

_**Controller, there is a problem.**_

Everyone jolted on hearing that booming voice. "What was THAT?!" Carl demanded.

"What is the problem?" the newcomer in the cave demanded.

_**The controls that would allow these magicals to be freed from containment have been fused together by what appears to be a powerful life-energy burst**_, that voice — which reminded Duncan of the voice of God as performed by Charlton Heston in an uncredited role in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille version of _The Ten Commandments_ — advised as the focusing crystal of the newcomer's staff softly pulsed in cadence with the words. _**I would recommend moving these unfortunates to the bioroid factory or one of the ships the Avalonians brought to Earth so they could be freed by competent technicians.**_

"_**No…!**_"

Everyone blinked on hearing that hissing voice, and then Methos sighed. "Oh, no!"

"What?!" Duncan demanded.

The oldest immortal alive sighed. "They're…"

"**_You will not take our prey away from us, crystal-blood!_**"

"…vampires," Methos completed…

…as a platoon's worth of snarling humanoid figures lunged out of the shadows at the newcomer. "Oh, my!" Luna cried out as she moved to level her wand at the place her tracking spell had landed earlier, and then she summoned her magic. "_**REDUCTO!**_"

Her Reductor Curse slammed into the rock, ripping a man-sized hole into the granite which was enough to penetrate through to the hidden cave…

…just as a massive burst of energy exploded from WITHIN the cave! Everyone screamed out on being nearly blinded by such a flash of radiance, many of them ducking away to cover their eyes. Silence then fell over the scene as people turned to look back into the hole Luna had made seconds before. Tsukiko was now moving to gaze inside, forging an illumination charm around her hand as she scanned the cave beyond. Luna immediately moved to stand beside her former teacher to look herself…and then she sighed. "Well, I will say one thing about her," she mused.

"What's that, Luna-chan?" the Dark Lady of the Orient asked.

Luna smirked. "She's very _neat_."

By then, several of the immortals were moving to look themselves. "Okay! So where the hell did Regina and all her friends vanish to?!" Carl demanded.

"We'll have to ask the Avalonians," Duncan mused as they gazed at the now VERY empty cave, which bore no trace of those who had been trapped there.

Much less anyone else…

* * *

Docked alongside the bioroid factory, minutes later…

The _Freedom_ was one of the 156 warships of the "Army of Lum" that had been seized back in February by the Avalonians as they fled the Phentax system. A Niphentaxian-built version of a Kashin-class battlewagon, she had been purged of her original crew thanks to intruder control systems by the Avalonian engineering staff, then filled to the deckheads with escaped slaves. After coming to Earth, the _Freedom_ housed its refugees for a month before they were allowed to resettle in various nations across the planet. Once she had performed that task, the battlewagon had been moored alongside the bioroid factory, the warp drive was gutted and the weapons stripped from her hull; the _Freedom_ and her sisterships were allocated for eventual dismantling and recycling.

"How in Lyna's name did all of THEM come here?!"

Fortunately, _Freedom_ did have a security team assigned to her at this time.

One, after all, just NEVER knew…

"I don't know," one of the patrolwomen assigned to the ship said as she shook her head. "I just saw a flash of light from the hangar deck, then looked in…"

"And you found all these," the watchmistress in charge finished as she gazed intently on the gestation chambers that had appeared inside the old main hangar bay.

The younger bioroid nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

«Help us…!»

Both women standing on the deck perked on hearing that plea within their minds, and then the watchmistress walked over to gaze intently at one of the trapped bioroids inside the nearest gestation unit. Noting she was Terran-form and Caucasian — with a head of very beautiful blonde hair framing a well-formed face that made her look to be twenty or so — the watchmistress then reached out with a hand to touch the glass that was holding her in place. «Are you well, sister?» she telepathically asked.

An empathic wave of surprise answered her. «You're magical?!» the trapped woman asked in a voice that had a recognizable English Yorkshire accent.

«Actually, I'm an Avalonian,» the watchmistress replied. «I'm a bioroid.» She then frowned. «Weren't you programmed with that information when you were templated?»

Confusion and a touch of fear appeared in that mental "voice" as the trapped woman mentally said, «I don't understand those terms.»

The watchmistress looked over. "Get a medical team here, stat!"

The patrolwoman nodded. "HAI!"

She ran towards a nearby communications station…

* * *

Nurmengard, a half-hour later…

"Luna!"

Luna looked over, and then she blinked. "Harry!" she called back as a small team of British aurors led by their director came up after travelling from London via portkey.

Watching this from nearby, all the immortals grinned as the Man-Who-Won embraced one of his closest friends. "When you need the best, you send the best," Amanda mused.

"You can say that again," Duncan noted; as many immortals had often interacted with magicals across the planet, the news of what Harry Potter had done in the 1990s to finally put down Voldemort had gained their attention. And admiration.

"What happened here, Luna?" Harry then asked as Luna guided him towards the just-opened cave, which was being guarded by two of the prison's in-house staff.

"Another appearance by our mysterious Japanese dragon-lover with the energy staff," Luna explained as they were waved into the cave by one of Nurmengard's prison staff; the entrance had been expanded by Tsukiko before she went in to do her investigation. "Tsukiko-sensei was here to visit Master Gellert. We've got a convention of immortals as well. Most are veterans of the Battle of the Gates. Master Carl Robinson was here escorting Sensei; he helped rescue her from Japan in 1945 when the Americans moved to save her from the Fat Man bomb. Tsukiko-sensei!" she called out.

Tsukiko — who had been kneeling on the ground as she used her eyes and magical senses to examine what residue remained from whoever had been here — looked over before she rose. "Harry-kun. Did we get you out of bed too early?" she asked.

Harry bowed respectfully to his former teacher, which she returned. "I just got into the office. Anything happening here rates a priority response from all the magical ministries in Europe," he explained as he drew his wand. "What happened here?"

"It appears Gellert's delightful brigade of combat sorceresses aren't as dead as we were once led to believe," Tsukiko stated before she waved her hand.

Harry blinked as a magical hologram appeared around them. He then gaped in shock on recognizing the mechanical devices that had once been inside this cave…and the people trapped within those very devices. "Oh, my God…!" he breathed out.

"Avalonian gestation chambers," Luna explained. "Did you get a total count, Sensei?"

"Forty-four hundred units," Tsukiko answered. "Enough for all the Schwarze Mädchen if I remember what Gellert told me about them in 1944 is true."

"But the Avalonians weren't here at the end of World War Two, Mistress Tsukuyomi," one of the prison staff — an officer of the American Department of Magic, Harry recognized by the armband he wore — stated. "How on Earth could the Schwarze Mädchen have been saved from immolating themselves to destroy the World-Gate and become bioroids?"

"The Niphentaxians, I would suspect," Luna answered.

Eyes locked on her, and then Harry nodded. "They've had observers on this planet for decades. They knew about all the magical enclaves, too. How would Ambassador Holmes' father have saved Rose and the others back in the 1980s?" he mused as Tsukiko dispersed the hologram. "The bioroid factory was available to them…"

Luna hummed. "A possible admirer of Master Gellert?"

He nodded. "Possibly." To the prison guard. "Could I speak to him for a moment?"

The American smiled. "Right this way, Director Potter."

* * *

Minutes later…

"Harry Potter…"

"Good morning, Master Gellert," Harry said as the frail, elderly man who had been residing inside the topmost cell in the prison tower for the last sixty-five years slowly rose and offered his hand. "I trust the accommodations are pleasant."

Gellert Grindelwald smirked as the young British wizard gave him a firm handshake. "It is what I deserve, Mister Potter," he said in barely-accented English before he smiled with delight at the beautiful woman who had accompanied her old schoolmate to the cell. "Miss Lovegood. As beautiful as ever. My thanks as always for the free copies of _The Quibbler_ you and your father send me," he said as he gently took her hand to give it a courtly kiss. He then blinked in confusion on seeing who else had come in. "Did something just happen?" he wondered as he moved to take his seat, waving his former ally over to sit on the bed. "I hardly hear anything in here these days."

"Something did happen, old friend," Yomigawa Tsukiko stated as she gazed intently at him. "Elizabeth-chan and her friends are all alive."

Silence.

More silence.

Still more silence.

And then…

"Impossible! I saw them die!" a pale Grindelwald breathed out as his eyes teared.

"We know," a strange voice then declared from the cell entrance.

Grindelwald looked over, and then his blue eyes went wide. "Highlander…!" he breathed out before nodding greetings to Duncan McLeod. Even if the immortals who had allied themselves with the mixed Allied team of hit-wizards and the War Hawks had helped defeat him at the Battle of Nurmengard, years of reflection had eroded the deep hatred the former master of most of magical Europe once felt for the undying swordsmen who had been fighting their vicious "Game" for as long as civilization had existed on Earth. "I expected you and your friends to have come here a month ago."

"All of us were pretty busy. The Game doesn't allow us to take breaks to remember old friends," Duncan stated before he gazed at Tsukiko. "We saw them, Gellert. We HEARD them in our minds." He took a deep breath. "Do you know of the Space Angels?"

The aged arch-mage nodded. "The Avalonians. The race of biological androids that was rescued by the Earth Angel and her adopted family some months ago. Some of the female guards here have done body-swaps in the last few months. Improved their magic almost fifty percent in all cases according to that special test that bright young fellow from the Department of Mysteries in Bonn devised back in the 1980s." He nodded to Harry. "Heard what happened when Harry's wives and his mistress were transformed into them as well. Didn't do Tom Riddle's young supporters in Britain much good. Why?"

"Elizabeth-chan and her friends were trapped within Avalonian gestation chambers, hidden inside a cave in the west side of the mountain, Gellert," Tsukiko answered. "I doubt you would remember meeting strange people with pointed ears when you were the Reich Minister of Magical Affairs in the 1930s and 1940s." At his surprised look, she added, "There were a couple Niphentaxian observers who lived in the village close to Tenmon-jinja. I never suspected they were aliens until those delightful Noukiites came to clear them off the planet in February…and this was after I had spent years training Harry-kun's sister and her friends. They knew about magicals, Gellert, so it would have been easy for them — even in the 1930s and 1940s — to slip in and out of the various enclaves to take close observations of people such as we."

"And their technology was advanced enough to defeat any magical defences against such things," Luna added. "Alicia Holmes told me that once."

"Could _Freiherr_ von Taserich have known of them?" Harry asked.

Grindelwald chuckled. "It's a lucky thing Heather Thompkins called off all the search parties sent by the various European ministries to find that man when she was elected as a Supreme Mugwump in the ICMC in the 1950s." He then sobered. "As Duncan or any of his friends can explain, Harry, Josef von Taserich is a man who — if he ever came to see you as a potential threat — would destroy you totally and utterly…and you wouldn't have any hope of slowing him down. The only people I know of who could stand up to him in an all-out battle are Dean Raeburn and Vladímir Tayčeško." He sighed. "If he knew of the Space Angels' masters — if he sensed observers from there here on Earth — the _Rittmeister_ would have made sure they never became a threat to him."

"So if whatever observers that were in Germany or those parts of Europe occupied by Germany in the Second World War were found by him…and if they had non-templated Avalonian bodies ready to use as deep penetration agents…" Duncan mused.

"The _Rittmeister_ could have seized those bodies, studied the templation process, then prepared replacement bodies for the Schwarze Mädchen. Their souls could have been transmitted into the new bodies the instant their old bodies were vaporized during the Battle of the Gates," Luna finished. At the others' surprised looks, she added, "His sympathy to normal-born magicals was well-known. The Schwarze Mädchen were all loathed and feared throughout Europe because they were normal-born and fanatically dedicated to the destruction of all European-based traditional magical societies in the pursuit of the Greater Good." She smiled. "Being normal-borns gave the Schwarze Mädchen a far wider and more cynical world-view than magical-born fighters would have possessed."

Grindelwald nodded. "Luna is right about the _Rittmeister_'s sympathy to normal-borns," he stated. "There was one time back in 1878 when the Mastapo tried to stop his augmenting the wands of normal-born students with ebony meson crystals from his own blood. They actually tried to obliviate him of all the knowledge he had of various magical societies." As Duncan snorted on hearing that, muttering on how impossible _that_ would have been, the former Dark Lord of Europe added, "They were all stripped of their magic and sent to Berlin with a note tied to one of them, warning the Mastapo to not bother him again." As the others chuckled — learning to deal with non-magical metahumans had always been a difficult thing for magical law enforcement to grasp — he added, "I do recall the _Rittmeister_ taking a particular liking to Margareta Hecht."

"The _Sturmscharführerin_ of the Black Maiden Brigade," Luna noted. "The Brigade's regimental sergeant-major to borrow the proper Army term for such a position."

Their host nodded. "The same. Like all of them, she was top of her class at magical school…but because she was normal-born, she wouldn't have gone far in the more traditional enclaves in Germany at the time. She was my driver when I took Tsukiko to Schloss Greifswald when she came to tell the _Rittmeister_ of the death of Master Hosan in 1937." He bowed his head. "At the _Rittmeister_'s order, Gretta beheaded the man responsible — Uchida Ryūsei, if I recall the name correctly — to see if he had absorbed Master Hosan's memories and life energy." He shook his head. "They weren't there."

"Hirosuke allowed his memories to be passed on to Dean Raeburn," Duncan stated.

Grindelwald nodded. "As we learned later." He gazed on Harry. "What happens now? Will they be forced to face war crimes trials? I would think their actions in 1945 when the Life-Maker launched an invasion of Earth from Nerio would exonerate them."

"We have to make sure they're healthy first, Master Gellert. I won't allow any of them — especially English ones like Elizabeth and Jessica Gibbon — to face prison without ensuring they're physically and mentally fit to stand trial. My counterparts in other nations will do the very same thing for their missing citizens," the Man-Who-Won answered. "Given that they are probably all Avalonians now, officials of the Provisional Government aboard the bioroid factory will have to be contacted about this. Their rights as Avalonians would have to factor into whatever legal proceedings — if any! — are to be initiated against them, even all these years later." He smirked. "If you've collected copies of the _Quibbler_, Master Gellert, you know of _**her**_, don't you?"

"The young Japanese woman with the energy staff who likes dragons and other magical creatures. Luna and her father have been trying to learn that woman's identity since she first appeared in March," Grindelwald answered with a knowing smirk, and then he blinked as he realized what his guest was now implying. "She was here?!"

"She teleported them out of the cave when the vampires attacked," Duncan stated.

Harry looked at the immortal from Gleann Fhionghain. "_**Vampires?!**_"

"Daywalkers by the looks of them, Harry-kun," Tsukiko stated. "All destroyed when our mysterious friend took Elizabeth-chan and her friends away."

Luna perked. "Daywalkers, Sensei? Are you sure?"

"Even if they were in a cave and away from direct sun exposure, normal vampires would still be lethargic at this time of day, Luna-chan," the Dark Lady of the Orient said.

"Daywalkers," Duncan concluded, nodding.

"That's why he's in London."

Eyes locked on Harry, who had a knowing look on his face. "Who?" Grindelwald asked.

The Man-Who-Won smiled. "Abraham Lincoln."

* * *

Inside a rented room above a certain pub in London, that moment…

"**_AH-CHOO!_**"

"Bless you, Abraham! Are you alright?!"

The near-immortal former president of the United States of America moaned as he reached up to wipe the jarred mucus from his nose. "Someone's talking about me."

The pale-skinned man who was seated at the work desk in the rented room blinked before he sighed. "Well, let's hope it's good talk," Henry Sturges breathed out.

Hearing that from the daywalker vampire who helped train him in his private avocation as a hunter of the undead almost two centuries ago, Abraham Lincoln smirked as he held up his favourite weapon. "If it isn't, I shall be prepared, Henry."

Sturges nodded. "As you've always been." He then took a deep breath as he stood up. "Well, if you'll excuse me, I have to get over to Paris."

"Be safe, old friend," Lincoln bade.

"Always."

* * *

Aboard the _Freedom_, two hours later (London time: After breakfast)…

"What can you tell me about them?"

The senior healer who had come with her team directly from the factory's control tower sighed. "A total of 4,400 Terran-turned-Avalonians, all physically about twenty years of age. Breaking them down by nationality, forty-five percent of them are German, fifteen percent Austrian, ten percent Italian, eight percent French and Walloon-Belgian, eight percent Dutch and Flemish-Belgian, six percent Danish and Norwegian, five percent Finnish and three percent of a mixture of other nationalities. The group leader, Elizabeth Gibbon, is British." She sighed as she gazed on the group of young women as they enjoyed their first-ever meal as Avalonians. Naturally, such meals were kept to "soft" foods given the many years they had spent in storage; the healer and her team had noted the various symptoms of cryogenic hibernation sickness in all of them even if their magic and the regenerative enzymes in their own blood was moving to heal them as quickly as the damaged cells and tissues could be regrown. "The incredible part of all this is that — as far as they believe — it's supposed to be 1945. The twenty-first of June to be exact." As the watchmistress in charge of the _Freedom_ gaped, the healer added, "And they should be at a place in Germany called Nurmengard, preparing to defend it from an attack by Allied magicals and…"

"Excuse me."

Both turned as one of the just-woken women came up to join them. A pretty blonde, she had blue-green eyes and the most perfect looks either Avalonian — who were both Terran-form, having been born on the factory itself; Terran-turned-Avalonian women wouldn't have been attracted by such right away unless they had been born lesbian or bi or if the right conditions to trigger what was popularly nicknamed "the time of the month" were present — had ever seen on a female of any known humanoid species. Like the others who had just been revived from a slumber of sixty-five years, she was currently dressed in the gestation suit used to help mould non-templated bodies into their final form; quartermasters from other parts of the factory were moving to get them some normal clothes. "Yes?" the watchmistress politely asked.

"I don't mean to sound ungrateful for what you're doing for us, but there are a lot of questions we need answered," she stated, her voice reflecting her Yorkshire ancestry. "What just happened to us? Last thing we remember was being at Nurmengard repelling the Allied attack there…and then we all woke up inside that cave."

"Where is this Nurmengard, anyway?" the healer wondered.

Gazing at her hosts, Elizabeth Gibbon took a deep breath. Whoever these beings were — _I'm an ALIEN now?!_ she thundered to herself once more as the unreality of the whole situation she and those technically under her charge now found themselves in nearly overwhelmed her — they clearly knew about magicals. Much to her inner delight, these beings seemed not to care a whit about that sort of thing…but then, given that Avalonians were all blessed with the ability to sense people's emotions from a distance and actually read people's thoughts by touching them — the healer had explained about that, not to mention explained about the Awakening process — magic probably didn't strike them so odd. "It's just to the northeast of Münster in Germany," the English-born _Reichsführerin der Schwarze Mädchen und Generalmajorin der Magische Reichsarmee_ then answered. "Within the Prussian province of Westphalia," she then added.

The other women nodded. "As we told you when you were all released from the capsules we found you in, this is the year 2010. The twentieth of July to be exact; it's 9:06 AM in London right now," the watchmistress stated after glancing at her iPhone. On seeing the flat rectangular device, Elizabeth had been shocked to learn that such was an actual _wireless telephone_ that was quite popular with all walks of life around the world. "As to how you got into those capsules — much less became Avalonians — we just don't know. We're tracing down the part numbers for the capsules to learn when they were removed from the factory…" — she waved forward to the open end of the hangar deck, which showed the side of the factory and cislunar space around Earth, which was in a waning crescent stage given the Sun's current position vis-à-vis the third planet and its lone natural satellite — "…to see exactly when your new bodies were first procured. Our former masters did have observers in Europe active before the Second World War, so the chances are very good that one of them DID help save all of you."

"Why?" Elizabeth then breathed out.

"Why what?" the healer asked.

"Why would _aliens_ — and aliens with obvious advanced technology at that! — be so interested in us?! Save for our magic, we would present nothing of value to them!"

The other women wanly smiled. "They effectively had no choice," the watchmistress said before she moved to explain the whole story about the natives of Phentax Two…

* * *

Level One of the Headquarters of Her Majesty's Ministry of Magic of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (located under Northumberland Avenue east of Trafalgar Square) in the City of Westminster, London, an hour later…

"Harry…if that's a joke, it's not _funny_!"

"Do I look like I'm _joking_, Perce?!" Harry asked as he gazed wearily at Percy Weasley. Both were in the latter's office; the Director of the DMLE wanted to give the Senior Undersecretary a head's up before he would brief Kingsley Shacklebolt about the return of Gellert Grindelwald's Black Maidens. "They were all there in that cave! Frozen in time for _sixty-five years_ as _**Avalonians**_ of all things…" He sighed. "And thanks to _**her**_, they're probably up aboard the bioroid factory as we speak."

The third-oldest son of Arthur and Molly Weasley shook his head as he reached into one of his desk drawers to pull out a bottle of Blishen's firewhiskey and two shot glasses. He poured a shot into each, then handed one of the cups to Harry. Both drowned the whiskey and then relaxed as the magically-charged alcohol gave them a gentle buzz. "I assume the press in Germany has already got wind of this?" Percy weakly asked.

Harry nodded. "It's already out on the MagicNet and the _Zauberwelt_ is running a special edition that'll hit the stands after lunch. According to Luna, all the people at Nurmengard have passed on the news to their home ministries. You can bet that the other major European broadsheets are going to have the return of the Schwarze Mädchen on Page One by tonight's edition. Tomorrow morning at the latest." He sighed. "As is standard procedure whenever there's an incident at Nurmengard, I reported what happened there to Supreme Mugwump Ramirez. I'm sure an emergency meeting of the ICMC will be called in a short while. How we'll approach the Avalonians, though…"

Percy shook her head. "Two steps forward, one step back," he muttered as he poured himself another shot of firewhiskey. Harry refused a second serving. "The Avalonians come to Earth and make their desire to live peacefully amongst the normals and the magicals known," he said after taking a sip of the whiskey. "Two of them saved your cousin from your uncle and aunt because of their abusing her for accidental magic…and that doesn't count what Madame Holmes did to save Rose and the other girls. Then the Oni and their friends move to invade Earth and the Earth Defence Force has to go deal with them. _Hood_'s commissioning in the skies over London throws everyone into a blind panic, which forced Luna to ask Lady Negako to help restore your wives' magic and revive Dora." He smirked. "Not to mention Ginny." As Harry chuckled, his host sighed. "Bella Lestrange escapes from St. Mungo's and throws everyone into another blind panic. She gets captured thanks to Teddy and is turned into an Avalonian because of the severity of the wounds Mother and Grace gave her in '97. She's turned sane and is banished from the country as a result, going to apprentice under Lady Evangeline in Japan. Now _this_…!" He took a deep breath. "What would they do? Any ideas?"

Harry sighed. "I talked to Hermione about this. As you might know, she's always been a private admirer of the Schwarze Mädchen." At Percy's surprised look, the Man-Who-Won smirked. "Oh, she hates the fact that they went to _Germany_ of all places to fight with the _**Nazis**_, even if Hitler and his lot hadn't initiated the Final Solution back then. Still, the fact is this: They were the first group of normal-borns to have made such a huge impact on magical society in Europe after the Statute of Secrecy was passed. Yes, their actions helped destroy the old International Confederation of Wizards; too many of that generation still despise Elizabeth Gibbon and her friends for doing that. Yes, they could be charged with the destruction of the loyalty anchor stones that enforced the rule of European magic ministries over the magicals in colonies across the planet; that was part of the deal Master Gellert made with Tsukiko-sensei when they allied with each other in 1939 to launch their wars against the ICW. Here in Britain, too many people still look on the Schwarze Mädchen as monsters. Most of Europe — those parts of Europe that were overrun by Grindelwald — feel the same way. Beyond Europe…?"

"They're respected…if not admired," the Senior Undersecretary finished, and then he sighed. "Well, let's go talk to Kingsley. This will be an interesting meeting."

Harry nodded as both rose…

* * *

The Isle of Lundy in the Bristol Channel (ninety kilometres west-southwest of Cardiff in Wales), that moment…

"Dead?"

The pale vampire bowed his head to his leader. "Yes, Adam. Wiped out to the last."

"By who?" the millennia-old daywalker — who had been one of the primary instigators of the Civil War in America during the early 1860s — calmly asked. "The Immortals?"

"No, sir. It appears this mysterious woman with the energy staff similar to Raeburn's Power Jewel — the one who's been visiting various magical enclaves on Earth and on Nerio for the last few months — was involved. That was in the reports coming now out of Nurmengard that our friends in Germany are monitoring. It's believed that the Black Maidens were all taken away into space. No doubt, they're…"

"Being turned into crystal-bloods," Adam finished as he took a deep breath. "Damn!"

"They're mudbloods, my friend," Theodore Nott stated as he sipped his firewhiskey. "I doubt someone like you would find even the dreaded _Schwarze Mädchen_…" — all the vampires in the room were quick to sense the derision in his voice on saying that — "…difficult to deal with in the long term." He then smirked. "Then again…"

"There is Azkaban," Adam finished for his host as the other vampires all smirked.

Theodore nodded. "Yes. There is Azkaban."

Rueful chuckles echoed through the reception hall as the assembled vampires, wizards and witches — who had joined together over the last month or so in an alliance to deal with the rapid transformation of human society since after the start of the year thanks to the Avalonians — all exchanged knowing looks. Watching them from his position near the grand staircase that led to the upper floor of the Nott mansion, Draco Malfoy could only smile as he sipped his firewhiskey. _What strange bedfellows necessity forces on people at times_, the Marquis of Cumbria mused to himself as he considered what he had just learned over the last week from the current Viscount of Torridge. Still, despite the potential loss of the magical power of the Black Maidens to the Avalonians — being five millennia old, Adam knew of some ancient rituals that would drain any magical of their power, transferring same to a willing recipient; it was _that_ which had aroused Draco's interest when Theo informed him of his alliance with the daywalkers — the ultimate success of their campaign against the Avalonians was still assured.

To both groups, the race of alien psychics now settling down on Earth personified the worst possible fate for them all. In the eyes of pureblood British wizards like Theo Nott and Draco Malfoy, the "muggle golems pretending to be human" had the ability to give non-magical psionic powers — the match of any master in Legilimency — that could sniff out a potential threat with gross ease. It had long been concluded that had the Avalonians been in Britain in force back in 1996 without being controlled by their Niphentaxian masters, the Death Eaters' launching of the Second Blood War could have turned into a bloody rout thanks to the aliens' weapons and their ability to sense danger from a distance; what Rose Potter and her sister Meridiana alumni did to help Harry Potter destroy the Death Eaters in 1997 had been bad enough. With the memories of the battles between the War Hawks and the American-led Liberty Legion on the "Allied" side and the Übermenschen Gruppe on the "Axis" side during Grindelwald's War in Europe and North America still fresh in the minds of older wizards — some of whom, even if they weren't here, did support Theo's alliance with Adam Sewell — a "metahuman evolution" of the muggles to the point where magic would be made irrelevant evoked the same type of wild paranoia that drove their ancestors into passing the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy in 1689. That, of course, didn't mention things like the _Hood_…

As for the vampires such as Adam and his sister Valdoma, the Avalonians' willingness to welcome normal Terrans into their ranks via body-swapping, blood-transfusion or DNA-augmentation therapy would — if allowed to go totally unchecked — come to eventually deprive them of their primary source of _**food**_. To many of them — who had been literally run out of North America after the Civil War thanks to the Rail-Splitter, who was ultimately saved from John Wilkes Booth's attempted assassination on 14 April 1865 thanks to Josef von Taserich and the infusion of ebony mesonium into his blood in yet another "experiment" by the immortal Prussian nobleman to see if there were humans out there who could master the ultimate power of the Atom of True Life — the thought of all normal humans becoming "crystal-bloods" spelt the ultimate extermination of their kind. Like Taserich, Avalonians had particles of mesonium — though diamond-pattern — in their blood stream; these particles helped enhance their bodies' regenerative powers. Such — if ingested by a vampire — would strip said vampire of his/her special powers and restore him/her to normal humanity. And as had been proven when the infamous Angelus, Spike and Drusilla had been "returned to the sun" two months ago thanks to Avalonian-Americans who had learned of them while helping restore Sunnydale after the collapse of the Hellmouth in 2003, the mesonium in Avalonian blood _always_ reverted the recipient to the physical age s/he could have been were that person born a natural Sagussan.

Angelus — born Liam O'Connor in 1727 — was now physically a forty year-old man.

Spike — born William Pratt in 1850 — was now physically twenty-nine.

As for the woman born Drusilla Keeble in 1842, she became an Avalonian thanks to body-swapping; had she undergone DNA-augmentation, she would physically be thirty years old.

For a five _**millennia**_-old vampire like Adam Sewell, potential exposure to mesonium flowing within the veins and arteries of a "crystal-blood" was the ultimate death sentence; as the standard Avalonian lifespan only stretched out to eight centuries, those like Adam would be rendered into dust once the mesonium got into his body.

"So how soon can you prepare a force to go deal with them?" a woman asked.

Theo looked over as Camellia Matthews came up to join them. A silver-haired woman with pale blue-grey eyes that some might mistake for an albino, she was a sister Slytherin from Theo's and Draco's year at Hogwarts and the heiress of the Viscountcy of Sutton thanks to the death of her older brother Charles during "Death Eater Season" in the summer of 1997; he had been a supporter of Voldemort only to be brutally taken down by Harry Potter in mid-July of that year. Her father Orion had been avowedly neutral when it came to voting for legislation in the Wizengamot for years. He _had_ deferred to the "dark" families when sensitive matters came up in the years following the Death Eaters' near-total destruction in 1997…until Pansy Black and Mandy Potter got their magic back thanks to the Avalonians a couple weeks ago and assumed voting proxy for the Black and Potter family seats. With the "light" side now in the ascendancy, the neutrals were shifting away from supporting people like Theo and Draco…which had angered not just Camellia but several of her peers from Hogwarts.

One of them was the wizarding guest of honour at this meeting: Achelois Runcorn, the double-heiress of the Noble and Most Ancient Houses of Runcorn of Widnes and Collins of Halton; her maternal grandfather Pierus Collins was the head of the latter house while her father Herodotus Runcorn was head of the former. Camellia's roommate at Hogwarts throughout all their years there, Achelois — a slender woman with cinnamon-shaded hair and chocolate-brown eyes that always flashed with calculation — had been the target of potential suitors since she graduated from Hogwarts in 1998. While she did have two younger sisters — twins Cassotis and Albunea — who could take up the combined house votes separately once Pierus and Herodotus had passed on, Theo knew Achelois desired to consolidate the combined votes in herself and a potential life-mate…

…even if people who could be seen as "acceptable" life-mates — which, given that Achelois was as pure a pureblood woman as could be found in Britain, meant only those of equally pure blood — were rather thin on the hoof in Britain these days.

"We could strike very early Friday morning," Valdoma — an alluring blonde woman with hazel eyes when she was not allowing her vampiric side to take over her — noted.

"How many prisoners are there?" another vampire, Halbert Golden, asked.

"At least 2,200 people, Mister Golden," Draco answered. "The purges after the fall of Riddle were thorough and left very little of our parents' generation who supported the cause living free of Azkaban." He grimaced as a touch of real fear entered his voice. "Even better, most of them should be quite docile for you to deal with once you get the Aurors out of the way. All the ones who allied with Riddle and escaped being killed by Potter in the summer of '97 were put into _**That Place**_ thanks to that half-blood, that mudblood Granger and that Korean bitch Mun convincing the Queen to open it up."

The vampires all looked amused on hearing Draco's oblique reference to the most feared magical prison ever to exist in Britain, Her Majesty's Prison Gonebren. Located somewhere in Bodmin Moor in Cornwall where a dozen ley lines intersected, it had been inhabited for over a thousand years by the dreaded Hollows. Created from the spirits of muggles who had, so some believed, been killed by dark wizards over the centuries by an unknown mage — to the utter outrage of pureblood traditionalists, the man most often credited with Gonebren's creation was _**Salazar Slytherin**_ himself! — who had been passionately sympathetic to non-magicals, the Hollows were said to simply had no love whatsoever for magicals of _any_ stripe. Once a prisoner had been condemned to Gonebren, s/he would have his/her soul savaged via a form of mind-raping no Legilimency master or Avalonian could equal. Those sentenced to the "Maze Amongst the Rocks" — as Gonebren was often nicknamed — eventually emerged nearly brain-dead and unable to live their own lives, virtually no different than those condemned to the Dementor's Kiss.

By the time the Statute of Secrecy had gone into effect in 1692, the Unspeakables in the Department of Mysteries had discovered the means to somewhat tame the mysterious Dementors — according to one legend, the soul-wraiths were supposedly transformed by an unknown dark wizard from the spirits of dead wizards and witches who had died thanks to the muggles during the Dark Times of Magic as a symbolic answer of sorts to the wizard-hating Hollows — and keep them caged on an island near the Shetlands called Azkaban. With that — and thanks to a growing belief that condemning criminals to face the Hollows was a death sentence even for those guilty of minor crimes — the Wizengamot decided to open a prison on Azkaban Island. After H.M.P. Azkaban was formally opened in 1705, Minister for Magic Eldritch Diggory — in a show of loyalty to the Crown…which many sensible people these days considered an unbelievable act of _**idiocy**_! — presented the keys for H.M.P. Gonebren to Queen Anne for the Crown's use.

As was quite well-known to almost all the magicals living in Britain these days, Gonebren — whose very NAME had became something of an unofficial taboo to British wizards and witches in recent years — had been used on several occasions since Azkaban's opening.

The most recent time was in the summer of 1997 when Rufus Scrimgeour was killed and the Death Eaters moved to effectively take over Britain…only to be countered when the Queen issued an emergency Magical Royal Proclamation under Her Prerogative to declare that the new ministry of Pius Thicknesse was in a state of _rebellion_ against the Crown!

Emboldened by that, Harry Potter's and Hermione Granger's Korean-descent technomancer housemate and year-mate Mun Aesup — who, according to some sources, was currently leading a mission of exploration to the planned Vinland colony using a cloaked starship, basing herself out of some Royal Navy unit somewhere — unleashed a mesonium version of an _**atomic bomb**_ on Azkaban to wipe out the Dementors, thus robbing the Death Eaters of very powerful allies and a place to incarcerate their enemies; this had been done after she had rescued Luna Lovegood and all the other mudbloods and blood traitors that had been sent there in hopes of suppressing any attempts at rebelling against the proper order of things. What was worse, _**That Place**_ was reopened…and soon began to be filled with unmarked supporters of Voldemort such as Delores Umbridge, to say anything of the Snatchers, the volunteer militia organized by the Death Eaters to go forth and track down mudbloods and blood traitors to remove them to Azkaban.

Those who survived "Death Eater Season" and the Battle of Hogwarts later that year would spend at least six months _there_ until Azkaban could be used again.

Theo's father Mason and Draco's father Lucius were two who had been so victimized.

For many, it had been a brutal object lesson: **_Defy the Crown at your peril!_**

Still, things could be done to restore things back to "normal"…

"Well, we wish you all luck," Achelois then said as she finished her firewhiskey before nodding her thanks as a house elf popped in to take the glass away. Rising from her chair, she walked over to offer her hand to Adam, who gave it a courtly kiss.

"Your support — even if it isn't as much as you wanted to give — is always more than appreciated, Mistress Achelois," the elder vampire stated with a polite smile.

"We fight to preserve our ways of life. Once the crystal-bloods are gone, we can finally put things aright for a change," she returned with a pleasant nod.

"Hear! Hear!" Draco called out as people raised their glasses in a toast…

_**To be continued…**_

* * *

**WRITER'S NOTES**

1) To begin, here are some basic notes on the Black Maidens and their internal structure…

The **Schwarze Mädchen** (singular **Schwarzes Mädchen**, short-title **SM**) — like other elements of the Nazi paramilitary forces such as the **Schutzstaffel** ("Protection Squads," short-title **SS**) — had their own special ranking system unique to them. I based the SM rank titles on the SS titles…though, as the Black Maidens were all women, the feminine noun ending "**-in**" was added to the term **führer** ("leader"). The rank levels (with equivalent NATO rank codes) and translations are as follows (listed from highest to lowest):

OF-6 — **Reichsführerin** ("Reich Leader")  
OF-5 — **Standartenführerin** ("Standard Leader")  
OF-4 — **Obersturmbannführerin** ("Senior Assault Unit Leader")  
OF-3 — **Sturmbannführerin** ("Assault Unit Leader")  
OF-2 — **Hauptstrumführerin** ("Chief Assault Leader")  
OF-1 (upper) — **Obersturmführerin** ("Senior Assault Leader")  
OF-1 (lower) — **Untersturmführerin** ("Lower Assault Leader")

OR-9 — **Sturmscharführerin** ("Assault Squad Leader")  
OR-8 — **Hauptscharführerin** ("Chief Squad Leader")  
OR-7 — **Oberscharführerin** ("Senior Squad Leader")  
OR-6 — **Scharführerin** ("Squad Leader")  
OR-5 — **Unterscharführerin** ("Lower Squad Leader")  
OF-4 — **Rottenführerin** ("Section Leader")  
OR-3 — **Sturmfrau** ("Assault Woman")  
OR-2 — **Oberfrau** ("Senior Woman")  
OR-1 — **Frau** ("Woman")

Of course, once the Schwarze Mädchen were mobilized as part of the **Magische Reichsarmee** ("Magical Army of the Reich," short-title **MRA**), they were given equivalent rank titles in the latter organization. Again, traditional female noun endings were added to most of the titles here, with _frau_ substituted for _mann_ ("man"). Of course, as the MRA is a **_magical_** combat force, equivalent titles to "wizard" and "witch" were used. So:

OF-6 — **Generalmajorin** ("Major General")  
OF-5 — **Oberste** ("Colonel")  
OF-4 — **Oberstleutnante** ("Lieutenant Colonel")  
OF-3 — **Majorin** ("Major")  
OF-2 — **Hauptfrau** ("Chief Woman")  
OF-1 (upper) — **Oberleutnante** ("Senior Lieutenant")  
OF-1 (lower) — **Leutenante** ("Lieutenant")

OR-9 — **Stabswachthexe** ("Staff Guard Witch")  
OR-8 — **Hauptwachthexe** ("Chief Guard Witch")  
OR-7 — **Oberwachthexe** ("Senior Guard Witch")  
OR-6 — **Wachthexe** ("Guard Witch")  
OF-5 — **Oberjagdhexe** ("Senior Hunting Witch")  
OF-4 — **Jagdhexe** ("Hunting Witch")  
OF-3 — **Sturmkampfhexe** ("Assault Combat Witch")  
OF-2 — **Oberkampfhexe** ("Senior Combat Witch")  
OF-1 — **Kampfhexe** ("Combat Witch")

So, as the **Waffen-SS** ("Armed SS") did during World War Two, the Schwarze Mädchen used as their full rank title a long phrase that incorporated their peacetime SM ranks with their wartime MRA ranks, i.e. _Reichsführerin der Schwarze Mädchen und Generalmajorin der Magische Reichsarmee_ ("Reich Leader of the Black Maidens and Major General of the Magical Army of the Reich") for **Elizabeth Gibbon**.

As an aside, the word **Reich** itself can be interpreted as meaning either "empire" or "realm"; because of that, it is often translated as "Imperial" when it appears in adjective format as noted above. When used as a noun, _Reich_ can also imply a foreign state of equal status to the various German empires/authoritarian states that have existed from 962–1806 (the **Holy Roman Empire**, later called the "First Reich"), 1871-1918 (the **German Empire**, also known as the "Second Reich" or _Deutsches Kaiserreich_) and 1933-45 (the infamous **Third Reich** of **Nazi Germany**). Naturally, because of the application of the term "Reich" in the Nazi state, the word has fallen seriously out of favour in modern Germany, only appearing in adjective format in place names like the **Reichstag** ("Diet of the Realm") building in Berlin; this was the traditional meeting hall of the Imperial German legislature from initial construction in 1894 until the infamous **Reichstag Fire** of 27 February 1933. The building itself remained in ruins until it was refurbished in 1992 after the reunification of Germany to become the meeting hall of the modern **Bundestag** ("Diet of the Republic"), the lower half of the national legislature.

2) Other translations: **Schloss** — Non-fortified castle or château; **Greifswald Bodden** — Bay of Griefswald; **Reichsminister für Magische Angelegenheiten** — Reich Minister of Magical Affairs (normally shortened to **Reichsmagieminister**), the administrative leader of the **Reichsmagieministerium** ("Reich Ministry of Magic"); **Mahō-Shōgun** — Supreme General of Magic; **Obergruppenführer** — Literally "Senior Group Leader," this was the SS equivalent rank to a four-star general (NATO rank code OF-9); **Gensui** — Literally "First Commander" though normally translated as "Marshal," this was the Imperial Japanese armed forces equivalent rank to a five-star general/admiral (NATO rank code OF-10); **Ministerpräsident** — Literally "minister-president," this is the equivalent German title to an American state governor or Canadian provincial premier; **Zauberrat** — Literally "Magical Council," this is the pre-1933 German equivalent to the British Wizengamot; **Kōkyo** — Literally "Imperial Residence," this is the proper name for the Imperial Palace in Tōkyō; **Magische Staatspolizei** — Literally "Magical State Police" and shortened to **Mastapo**, this is the pre-1945 German version of the Aurors serving the British Ministry of Magic (this was done as a play-off on the normal term **Gestapo**, which is short for _Geheime Staatspolizei_ ["Secret State Police"]); **Deutscher Gruß** — Literally "German Greeting," this is the gesture Nazis always made when saluting someone; **Vierte Bataillon** — Fourth Battalion; **Für das höhere Wohl** — Literally "For the Greater Good," which served as Gellert Grindelwald's rallying cry; **Justizvollzugsanstalt** — Literally "Institution for the enforcement of justice," this is the German title for a penitentiary; **Rittmeister** — Literally "Ride Master," this is the German cavalry rank title for an army captain (NATO rank code OF-2); **Zauberwelt** — Literally "Wizarding World," this is the title of the German version of the _Daily Prophet_.

3) **Oleg Grigorijevič Gredenko** is the full name I give to the wand-maker known to _Harry Potter_ fans simply as **Gregorovitch**, the wand-maker who was killed near the start of _Deathly Hallows_. As he was played by Croatian actor **Rade Šerbedžija** (born 1946), I borrowed the names from characters he portrayed in the movie _Quicksand_ and the television series _24_ to properly flesh out the wand-maker's name. As I stated in my _Icemaidens_ stories, this man always uses his patronymic as his artistic name.

4) **Uchida Ryūsei** is — as hinted above — named in partial tribute to **Uchida Ryōhei** (1873-1937), the founder of the ultra-nationalist **Black Dragon Society** (_Kokuryū-kai_) that many attribute as being the organization that prompted the launching of the Greater East Asia War (the Pacific side of World War Two) as a way of enforcing Japanese hegemony on eastern Asia.

5) Fans of _Highlander_ may recognize some of the other Immortals who came to Nurmengard when **Duncan MacLeod** and **Joe Dawson** went there. Atop **Methos** (the oldest living Immortal, who first appeared in the third-season episode of the same name) and **Amanda Darieux** (who was the central character of the spin-off series _Highlander: The Raven_; she first appeared in the first season episode "The Lady and the Tiger"), there is **Carl Robinson** (who first appeared in the second-season episode "Run For Your Life"), **Robert de Valicourt** and his wife **Angelina de Valicourt** (both of whom appeared in the fourth-season episode "'Till Death"), **Erno Jocszak** and **Alicia Mackenzie** (both of whom were mentioned in the third-season episode "Courage"). Also mentioned here were **Jacob Kell** (the villain of the fourth film _Endgame_) and **Antonius Kalas** (who first appeared in the third-season episode "Song of the Executioner"). Another character referred to here was **Lynn Horton**, who is Joe Dawson's niece and the daughter of the infamous Hunter **James Horton**; the latter first appeared in the first-season episode "The Hunters" (Lynn, however, never appeared in the television series).

6) The incantation **Revideor** is based on the Latin word _revideō_ (literally "to revisit"). I chose this term as a sort of variation of the **Four-Point Spell** concept that first appeared in _Goblet of Fire_ and is more popularly known as the "Point Me" Spell. Luna's spell — known in English as the **Location Revealing Charm** — allows her magic to lock in on something of interest and seek it out.

7) Fans of _Negima_ will know of **Poyo Rainyday**; she is **Zazie Rainyday**'s elder sister. The tribal name **Daemona** is my term for the "demon-folk"; Poyo and Zazie are both members of the ruling family of that particular group of shape-shifters. Poyo first appeared at the end of the _Negima_ manga story "Ala Alba, Charge!" (manga episode #294). The **griffin-dragon** mentioned by Luna is the same type of beast that first appeared in the "Magical Girl Yūe" extra episode of the 2009-10 _Mahō Sensei Negima! Mō Hitotsu no Sekai_ OVA series.

8) A **Watchmistress** (male term **Watchmaster**) is a junior officer on a Sagussan warship.

9) The **Abraham Lincoln** who appears here is the character that appears in the 2010 biographical historical novel _Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter_ (ISBN 978-0-446-56308-6). Appearing with him in this part is his friend and mentor, **Henry Sturges**. **Adam Sewell** is the chief villain of the movie version of _Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter_. His family name is my creation; I based it on the British actor who portrayed him in the film, **Rufus Sewell** (born 1967). His sister **Valdoma** also appeared in the _AL:VH_ movie.

10) As fans of the _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ television series will remember, **Angelus** (AKA **Angel**), **Spike** and **Drusilla** were all demon-possessed vampires that were encountered from time to time by the Slayer and her friends. Unlike the "daywalker" vampires from _AL:VH_, vampires hunted by the Slayers were effectively soulless shells possessed by extra-dimensional beings who wanted to make themselves the apex hunter in the worldwide food-chain. However, the souls of their normal selves were — as I see it — deeply suppressed in the subconscious mind of the vampire; how was it possible, after all, for the human souls of people like Angel or Spike to be restored to full control over the body either by gypsy magical ritual (in the former case) or a cerebral microchip (in the latter case)?

As an aside, the family name for Angel's human-self is my invention; he was never given such in _BTVS_.

11) **Camellia Matthews** (and her father **Orion Matthews**), **Achelois Runcorn** (as well as her maternal grandfather **Pierus Collins**, father **Herodotus "Hero" Runcorn** and younger sisters **Cassotis Runcorn** and **Albunea Runcorn**) and **Mun Aesup** are all characters I used in the _Icemaidens_ stories; I created the first version of them in the short story _A Technomancer's Drabble_ for the Yahoo Group website of one of my favourite authors, **Seel'vor**. I based them originally on three of the unnamed characters that were on JKR's class list which she showed to the audience in the BBC 2001 Christmas special _Harry Potter and Me_. As I mentioned in _Harry Potter and the Icemaidens_, I modified the character of "Moon" into a Korean-Briton ("moon" is one of the alternate Romanization spellings of the Korean term **mun**, which means "door" or "gate" and is written as **門** in hanja or **문** in han'gŭl) in tribute to the time I lived in the Land of the Morning Calm from 1996-2005. Of course, the personal histories of Camellia, Achelois, Aesup and their relatives vary differently from the _Icemaidens_ series as the concept of the **Magical Sheriff** introduced in that series doesn't exist in the universe of this story.

12) **Her Majesty's Prison Gonebren** — and the **Hollows** who inhabit it — were first mentioned in _The Icemaidens and the Philosopher's Stone_.


	2. Hermione Goes to Meet Her Heroes

The borough of Halton in Cheshire, a home south of Halton Castle just off the Northway, lunchtime…

"Is this true, Lisa? You're not trying to pull an old man's leg, are you?!"

A light smile crossed the face of the beautiful blonde woman with the dark blue-grey eyes as she gazed on her elderly host. "It's true, Ryan," Lisa Turpin stated, her voice strongly flecked with the Lowlands accent she had been born with. "The Schwarze Mädchen are all alive. Somehow — according to Luna Lovegood, _Freiherr_ von Taserich might have been involved in this — their spirits were preserved from Death's embrace at the Battle of the Gates of Nurmengard and they were all reborn as Avalonians. However, due to some complication with the gestation chambers, they've been trapped in suspended animation since that fight. They were only just discovered this morning thanks in part to the Immortals; they gathered there today to pay tribute to their friends who died at the Battle of the Gates."

Hearing that, the aged wizard — in physical looks, Pierus Collins always reminded Lisa of the late American actor Jack Palance as he appeared in films like _Batman_ and _City Slickers_ — blinked before he slowly lowered himself into the lounger in the middle of his reading room. The Collins home — which was quite modern as wizarding homes came; Lisa had learned everything about her host after she had joined the Department of Mysteries in the wake of her graduating from Ravenclaw in 1998 with top NEWTs in charms and transfiguration, which she later expanded on to gain masteries in spell-crafting — was virtually no different than the other homes located around the sandstone hill where the normal Barons of Halton had maintained their keep until the Fifteenth Century.

Unlike other pureblood wizarding clans, the Collinses of Halton had never really lost touch with their non-magical neighbours and had, for the most part, maintained strong links with the normal world. Such relations had prompted the patriarch of the clan to make sure that everything close to him was shielded when Voldemort had begun to rampage across Britain in the 1970s; Pierus — who had been three years ahead of Tom Riddle — saw all of the modern-day borough of Halton layered with special wards that deflected everything from the Trace which tracked underage wand usage to portkeys and attempts at apparition by those magicals who had not been keyed into the wards. That ensured that — unlike some other families that had been torn apart by the First Purification War like the Blacks — the Collinses and their neighbours across the River Mersey, the Runcorns of Widnes, survived intact…and were able to effectively contribute to the success of "Death Eater Season" in the summer of 1997 when Harry Potter declared all-out war on Voldemort and his allies.

However, even if there had been no deaths in either clan, the Purification Wars had taken a toll on both the Collinses and the Runcorns. Albert Runcorn — who had allied with Delores Umbridge when they moved to create a "muggleborn registry" when Pius Thicknesse was made to become Minister for Magic in the wake of Rufus Scrimgeour's assassination — was thrown into Gonebren in early July that year, which destroyed the man; he was currently incarcerated in Azkaban. His "betrayal" of his family's long-standing pro-normal-born stance broke the heart of his cousin Herodotus, Pierus' son-in-law. That effectively forced Pierus' daughter Napaeae to resign from a well-paying job in the Invisibility Task Force to care for her husband full-time. That ultimately wrecked the influence the Runcorns had in the Wizengamot…which — if what Lisa had recently learned about Pierus' elder granddaughter was even the LEAST bit true! — could help swing things back to the bad old days before the Battle of Hogwarts.

"Where are they?" he then asked.

"According to the last report I got before I came here, they've been most likely moved to the bioroid factory in orbit around the Moon," the newly-ennobled Baroness of Brechin replied. Like her year-mates Hermione Granger, Kevin Entwhistle, Dean Thomas and Justin Finch-Fletchley in concerns with what wealth their magical ancestors once possessed, Lisa had been able to claim her maternal family fortune on reaching her majority sometime after the Battle of Hogwarts. While she didn't really care at all about the Wizengamot — back when she was a student, she saw the legislative body as being SO broken, it only deserved to be consigned to the history books — she was glad that she could now add her voice to the reform movement that had been reborn when Pansy Black and Mandy Potter regained their magic. And while the traditionally "dark" lords like Draco Malfoy sneered at the "uppity half-blood upstart" when she swore her magical oath to serve in the Wizengamot in a special session the Wednesday after the Defunct Lords Act was tossed into the rubbish heap, others had been happy to welcome one of the brightest students to come out of Hogwarts in recent years amongst their ranks.

Especially since Lisa had possessed a powerful patron in Pierus Collins — who had sung her praises to the skies every chance he could — since her graduation from school.

Of course, there was nothing improper about their relationship. Pierus' wife Delilah — a Canadian from Prince Edward Island who came to Britain after her graduating from the Institute of Science and Magic, the Dominion's primary magic school on the Sibley Peninsula near Thunder Bay in Ontario, to help with the reconstruction of European magical enclaves after Grindelwald's War — passed on after the turn of the millennium. Pierus' loyalty to his beloved "Josie" — the nickname came from Delilah's middle name "Josephine" — was ironclad and all those who personally knew the man understood that he would NEVER contemplate betraying her even after she had died. Atop that, Lisa was simply too professional a magical researcher to allow a passionate affair with a dashing older man to get in the way of her work; it was only the influence of the politics of old that saw Daphne Greengrass — whom Lisa did respect and saw as a friend — become Ian Boot's number two in the Department of Mysteries in recent years. And while Lisa was permitted to call Pierus "Ryan" — his middle name — when they were in private, she respected and cared for the older man enough to honour his wishes.

He breathed out as he gazed up at the chandelier-covered ceiling of his reading room. "Well, if there was any person on the planet who could have saved Lizzie's people, the _Rittmeister_ would have done it," he said as he reached over to a small box on the table beside his lounger. "I never told you that, did I?" he then asked.

She hummed. "Brigadier Gibbon…" — she always addressed Elizabeth Gibbon by the equivalent British title to her rank in the Magische Reichsarmee — "…graduated from Hogwarts in 1938. You were a second year in her NEWT year." Her eyes then twinkled as she gazed upon him. "You had a crush on her?" she teased.

"On both her and her twin sister," he admitted as he opened the box, drawing out a beautiful pendant. "Take a look at her," he bade as he handed it over.

Noting the pendant was of the type that enclosed a picture, Lisa flipped it open…and then gaped in awe. "Oh, Morganna…!" she breathed out. "She's gorgeous!"

"And given that she'll have an Avalonian body now, Lizzie and Jess will be even MORE beautiful," Pierus said with a chuckle. "Who knows! When you meet them, you just might become soul-bonded to one of them!" As her cheeks flamed in embarrassment, he winked. "Or is there something you haven't told me yet," he teased back.

The Terran-turned-Avalonian magical researcher smirked as she handed the pendant back. "No, I haven't found the right person to become _marei'cha_ with," she stated. "I told you this just after Alice Holmes arranged for my body-swap in March, Ryan! The instant I get a soul-mate, you'll be the first to know!" She wagged her finger at him.

He mock-ducked that scolding stare before taking a deep breath as he put the pendant away. "I do worry about you, Lisa," he then admitted. "You know I promised your father that I'd watch out for you." As she nodded — David Turpin had died in the same attack that had killed his wife Tasha; Lisa's pureblood father had been targeted for his "blood treason" — in understanding, he then smirked. "Maybe…"

"Maybe what?"

He took a deep breath. "Maybe it's time to force a few things," Pierus mused. "Much that Kingsley and Harry and Percy have worked their arses off to force some necessary changes on our society, as long as the Wizengamot is still the way it is…"

"I've known that for years," Lisa admitted. "Yes, I was glad to take my oath to serve in that chamber last week…but I've secretly long wished that the Queen had used one of those Magical Royal Proclamations she issued in 1997 to _**disband**_ the Wizengamot to clear the way for something more egalitarian." She then smirked as she added, "Once that was done, idiots like Malfoy would have had to WORK for a change!"

Pierus cackled as he recalled the small monthly stipend paid to him and other members of the Wizengamot as a sort of "salary" for their public service to the magicals of the United Kingdom; that had been voted into place in the wake of Grindelwald's War. While he did honour all the good work his family had done as one of the "Seven and Ten" in both the modern Wizengamot and the old Wizards Council since the Norman invasion of 1066, he understood where Lisa was coming from. The Wizengamot's normal counterpart in Parliament, the House of Lords, had undergone many reforms in recent years, especially in 1999 when the dead weight of many hereditary peers had been legislated away to cut down the numbers who could sit in the Lords Chamber at the Palace of Westminster. Even more, the judicial functions of the upper house of Parliament were stripped away the previous October when the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom began its work; prior to that, a group in the upper chamber called the "Lords of Appeal in Ordinary" served as the final court of appeal in the United Kingdom. And while the Wizengamot was nowhere near as bloated — at full strength on its modern founding in 1705, there were sixty-nine members of the magical legislative body — as their counterparts up the Thames, the magical lords of Britain were also often forced to perform administrative or executive functions in the Ministry of Magic…and that didn't count the fact that the Wizengamot ALSO served as the ONLY magical judicial court in all of Britain!

"What do you have in mind?" Lisa then asked as she sensed something inside her friend.

Pierus took a deep breath. "Is she committing treason against the Crown?"

Hearing that, the young researcher felt a chill run through her bones on sensing the _**finality**_ in his words. She knew Pierus was asking about Achelois. His younger granddaughters — Cassotis and Albunea had been a year behind Achelois; the former was a Ravenclaw, the latter a Hufflepuff — hadn't given a damn about the blood politics that had fuelled Voldemort's two attempts at conquering Britain. But Achelois had been a member of the Serpents' Den when it had been under the effective control of Draco Malfoy and his clique; before the Battle of Hogwarts, one couldn't be a Slytherin without at least paying lip-service to the pureblood agenda. Yes, there were people from that house who had risen above such nonsense; one only had to look at Daphne Greengrass and Blaise Zabini, even Pansy Parkinson-Black. But even if the Death Eaters had supporters in all the houses of Hogwarts during the 1980s and 1990s, the heart of what Voldemort had championed for years had beaten the strongest in Slytherin…and Lisa knew Achelois hadn't really developed the emotional strength to think for herself and give vent to what ambition and cunning had seen her sorted to the Serpents' Den in the first place.

"Willingly, no," she finally declared. "But she's always been more of a follower than a leader. She never could really resist Draco Malfoy's influence. Atop that, she's like Harry himself: The heiress of two top-tier seats in the Wizengamot. She's been wooed and courted by prospective mates since before she graduated. That makes her feel quite privileged, practically in the same vein as how Malfoy himself felt thanks to his father spoiling him like he did. If Malfoy's planning something — and no doubt, he is; he's not going to stand seeing the Wizengamot swing fully over to Harry's side thanks to Mandy and Pansy getting their magic back — she'll support it. Even at the risk of drawing the Queen's wrath all over her like what happened to her cousin."

Hearing that, he weakly nodded. Despite how upset he was at Achelois, Pierus knew how much she had cared for her "Uncle Albert"; learning that the DMLE special investigator had been imprisoned in _**Gonebren**_ for his acts of treason to the Crown had nearly destroyed her. "A pity that when she blew up Azkaban with that meson bomb, Aesup didn't permanently wreck the island," he mused. "I always believed Gonebren was the better place to deal with criminals and traitors; it was a more efficient deterrent against that sort of behaviour." He then took a deep breath. "I may not have much time left, Lisa. You know that. And I am disappointed in Achelois. While I'd never do what that idiot Crouch did with his traitor son in the 1980s, I don't want to see any of my grandchildren incarcerated for being stupid." His dark eyes then focused on her. "I think you can figure out a way to save Achelois from herself, can you?"

She blinked before nodding. It wasn't as profound as a magical Life Debt, but she did owe the man before her a lot. "I'll think of something, Ryan," she promised…

* * *

London, the Ministry of Magic, fifteen minutes later…

"Welcome back, Lisa."

"Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod…!"

Lisa blinked on hearing that mile-a-minute chanting from Hermione Granger before she looked over to watch the female member of the Golden Trio pace around her private office, acting almost akin to how she behaved when Gilderoy Lockhart had been their DADA teacher in their second year. She then took a deep breath before she gazed on her co-worker from the Department of Mysteries. "She got the news?" she teased.

"Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod…!"

"What the hell do you think, Lisa?!" Daphne Greengrass moaned as she, Lì Sǔ, Luna Lovegood, Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott watched in amusement as Hermione endured a panic attack, complete with pulling of her bushy hair and pacing to and fro. "She's been a fan of the Schwarze Mädchen ever since she first learned of them thanks to Lady Tsukuyomi. Finding out that some of her greatest heroes are ALIVE…!"

"Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod…!"

Lisa moaned. "_**PETRIFICUS TOTALUS!**_" she barked out.

Hermione screamed out before her body suddenly locked up and she collapsed onto her back, unable to move anything — even her jaw — thanks to Lisa's wandless use of the Full Body-Bind Curse; mastering their magic without the need of wands had been one of the things the members of the Defence Association had learned in Lisa's sixth year while Harry Potter had been under the personal tutelage of Yomigawa Tsukiko and Nekane Springfield. As the other women gaped in awe at the blonde Ravenclaw — it was a VERY brave person who ever tried to curse Hermione Granger! — Lisa walked over to stand to the normal-born woman's side. "_Finite_!" she barked out the cancellation spell before she put her fists on her hips. "'Mione, I personally don't think that Brigadier Gibbon would appreciate you acting like some screaming fan-girl around her!" she scolded as Hermione angrily glared at her. "Get your bloody act together, you idiot! If you want to go to the factory and meet the woman, act like you did when you were the brains that made sure Harry survived his fights with Riddle, for Morganna's sake!"

A jolt ran through Hermione…and then she breathed out. "Thanks, Lisa. I needed that."

"She learns," Luna stated as Lisa leaned down to help Hermione back on her feet.

"So what's the news?" Susan then wondered as the others came into the office, Hannah moving to close and lock the door behind them. As Hermione moved to sit at her desk — the others knew that the anti-animagus and other counter-eavesdropping wards she had put around her place of work were always active; there was just no way in hell that Rita Skeeter could ever penetrate into THIS place — and sip a soothing cup of tea, the others relaxed in the guest chairs. "Has Kingsley made a decision?"

"No, not yet," Hermione stated. "He's going to meet with Ambassador Holmes later today to discuss the issue. Thanks to the Vinur Drekar, every Avalonian on the factory most likely know that 4,400 of their missing sisters have been found alive and well."

"Oh! You call her _that_?!" Luna asked.

Hermione smirked as she tried not to roll her eyes. "It's a lot better than just using a simple pronoun to describe that woman. Besides, wasn't she involved in that incident with those thirty girls that were on that Niphentaxian destroyer that came to Earth last week? The ship that was controlled by some android son of the man who wanted to own all the _Haida_'s and _Yamato_'s commissioning crews?"

"True, she was," the daughter of the owner of the _Quibbler_ stated with an approving nod; she personally hadn't cared for that poor woman to just be called "_**her**_" in the first place…but had been forced to play along when the _Daily Prophet_ and other European daily broadsheets began using that simple pronoun to describe that person. "And I hope she will finally be able to persuade her friends to stop hiding themselves. Especially given the fact that our friend's bonding programming has activated and she now views Moroboshi Ataru as her future soul-mate," she added with a grin.

Silence.

More silence.

Still more silence.

And then…

"Merlin! You're kidding us, right?!" Sǔ exclaimed.

"It's true," Luna affirmed. "She even wrote him a beautiful letter confessing her heart to him. I won't say anything more, of course; it IS private correspondence between Ataru and our wonderful dragon-lover, after all." As the others giggled on hearing that — even if Luna had long earned the nickname "Loony" because of her odd worldview, she had ALWAYS adhered to proper press ethics when she did her work for her father's news magazine…which put her heads-and-shoulders above muckrakers like Skeeter — the magical naturalist from Devon sighed. "So, Hermione…when will you go up to the bioroid factory to meet your favourite heroines? Today, I hope."

Hermione gaped. "Luna! I just can't barge up there and…!"

"Hermione, think about it," Luna cut her off. "Much that I'm grateful to _Freiherr_ von Taserich for what he probably did to save all their lives, those poor women have been effectively cut off from the outside world for SIXTY-FIVE years! Never mind the shock of finding out they're literally ALIENS on their own home planet now! How will they adopt to things like computers, cell phones and everything else we take for granted?!"

"What if they're charged for war crimes?" Hannah demanded. "Yes, what they did when it came to the loyalty stones they destroyed in the 1940s was the right thing, but…!"

"Hannah, the organization the Schwarze Mädchen fought to destroy in that war has been effectively gone since early 1946," Luna cut in. "The organization that replaced the ICW passed a private member's binding resolution in 1950 that exonerated their actions in that war. Yes, most of the countries of Europe — even neutral nations like Ireland, Switzerland and Sweden — voted against that, but that resolution was PASSED! The Ministry is legally bound to respect that resolution. Atop that, they were declared dead at the end of Grindelwald's War! Yes, their spirits survived as Avalonians…but as I just said, it's been SIXTY-FIVE years since the Battle of the Gates! Why on Earth should we try to drudge up all that silly nonsense…even if, to Brigadier Gibbon and her friends, it practically was yesterday?!"

"They were reported to have helped hunt down senior Nazis after Hitler killed himself and they were free of the loyalty oath they were forced to make to him," Hermione added; she had learned that from Gellert Grindelwald via Yomigawa Tsukiko. "People like Bormann and Himmler, for example. So they certainly weren't the racist idiots that some people who've long loved to draw connections between Master Gellert and the Nazis have always painted them as. Yes, they didn't care for the cultures they were blindly dragged into when they were invited to attend schools like Hogwarts…but that didn't mean they wanted to slaughter every staleblood idiot who crossed their path."

"Atop that, there is the issue of the vampires," Luna breathed out.

Hannah tensed. "WHAT vampires, Luna?!"

"Well, when the Vinur Drekar came down to Nurmengard to get the Schwarze Mädchen out of their gestation tubes, a whole slew of daywalker vampires tried to attack her." As the others gasped in shock, Luna added, "Of course, the Vinur Drekar was a 'crystal-blood' and didn't care to deal with such creatures, so she disintegrated them with her lovely staff." She then nodded. "She was very neat in doing that, I have to say."

"Oh, Merlin…!"

Eyes locked on Hannah. "What is it?" Susan asked her best friend.

The blonde café worker took a deep breath. "We have to go to the Leaky Cauldron."

"Why?!" Sǔ asked.

"Abraham Lincoln's here," Hannah replied.

The others all gaped at her, even Luna. "_**President Lincoln?!**_" Hermione croaked.

"Yeah! He came in last week and has been staying at the Cauldron since," Hannah stated with a shake of her head. "He didn't tell Tom or me why he was here…but given what he did during the Score and Four, it's quite bloody obvious."

The others exchanged looks. Hermione then stood. "Let's go!"

* * *

The City of Westminster, the Leaky Cauldron on Charing Cross Road, minutes later…

A knock echoed on the door of one guest room. "Yes?!"

"Mister Lincoln?!" a voice called out. "Can I come in?!"

The door was telekinetically unlocked. "Come in, Miss Abbott!"

The door was opened, allowing Hannah to step inside. Standing by the window of his room — he had been gazing out into Diagon Alley when the goddaughter of the Cauldron's owner had knocked — the nearly-immortal sixteenth president of the United States smiled…before an eyebrow arched. "You know I don't care to be hounded by autograph seekers, Miss Abbott," Abraham Lincoln said with a teasing smirk. "Reminds me too much of all the damned office-seekers I had to deal with when I was in Washington years ago."

"We wouldn't think of doing something like that after all you've endured, Mister President," Hermione Granger said as the others came into the room. After Hannah closed the door and magically locked it — which made the vampire hunter blink — the normal-born from West Sussex proceeded to do introductions. Once that was done, she then asked, "Sir, was there some reason you came to Britain?"

He gazed at her before he walked over to sit down at the work desk set close to his bed. "Your reputation has preceded you, Miss Granger. The most brilliant student to have graduated from Hogwarts in recent years; you even outstripped Mister Potter's late mother when it comes to masteries." As he waved his guests over to relax themselves on the bed or the small couch set off to one side of the room, that lanky grin of his came back. "Then again, you had Lady Tsukiko to help teach you some things when the ICMC decided enough was enough in 1996 and asked her and young Miss Springfield to help your friend properly prepare himself for his final confrontation with Tom Riddle."

"Which I was more than grateful for," Hermione stated as she tried not to blush on sensing the powerful yet friendly empathic aura the man was projecting. She knew Abraham Lincoln wouldn't ever dream of taking advantage of other people with the psionic powers the meson — originally ebony, later de-crystalized to ruby thanks to Dean Raeburn in 1889 — in his bloodstream gave him. After the agonies of the Civil War, a lifetime hunting the undead to assuage a childhood desire for vengeance at the murder of his mother Nancy in 1818, plus his being made near-immortal thanks to Josef von Taserich just before he "died" at the hands of John Wilkes Booth in 1865, the Rail-Splitter couldn't bring himself to do something so heinous. "Sir, I know I've no right to intrude on your personal business, but it's known — thanks to Luna — that you rarely travel beyond your home in the Greasy Grass Settlement these days unless you feel that some daywalker vampire like the one who killed your mother has stepped way out of line and needs to be put down. Luna has some information that might help you."

Lincoln perked. "Miss Lovegood?"

"There was a platoon of daywalkers spotted at Nurmengard this morning," Luna announced.

Silence.

"Nurmengard?" the vampire hunter breathed out. "Why there? Mister Grindelwald is getting on in years and he's not as blessed as I am with meson in his blood."

"The Schwarze Mädchen were the true targets; they survived the Battle of the Gates and kept in cryogenetic suspension in a cave on the west side of Nurmengardberg," Luna stated. "However, when the vampires came on the scene, they discovered that all those women were now Avalonians. No doubt, Brigadier Gibbon and her friends were saved by your own patron in 1945 with the unwilling help of the Niphentaxians who were in Europe at the time. His sympathy to normal-borns is well known to you, I believe." At his nod, she then smiled. "Before they got the chance to taste their blood and suffer a very _fatal_ form of meson poisoning, the Vinur Drekar came down to destroy the vampires, then whisk the Schwarze Mädchen away, most likely to the bioroid factory."

More silence.

"Ah!" Lincoln said. "So she's still doing good deeds. Good for her!"

His guests gaped. "You've met her?!" Hannah demanded.

He chuckled. "She came to the Settlement in mid-April when she discovered a plot by some idiot to capture sasquatches who were visiting my friend Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake from their village in northwest British Columbia and have them exposed to normal people to settle the whole 'Bigfoot' debate once and for all." As all the witches gasped — sasquatches and other such near-humanoid beings like the yeti of the Himalayas were protected magical sentient species under ICMC law as they were distantly related to the frost giants of the Arctic — on hearing that, Lincoln smiled. "She appeared out of nowhere, blasted this fellow and his friends before they could launch their ambush, then tied them up for the law enforcement authorities to get their hands on."

"Did you learn anything about her, sir?" Lisa asked.

"Pretty much what Miss Lovegood and her father have long concluded about her, Miss Turpin," he answered. "She's an Avalonian, Terran-turned. Originally Japanese, from Shikoku given her accent. She's a Zoroastrian in all aspects, which struck me as quite odd, but she is respectful of other faiths. I hear Mister Hagrid really likes her."

"She stopped five attempts at dragon poaching known to Father and his staff," Luna provided. The daughter of the owner of the _Quibbler_ met the former American president in the summer of 1994 when she and her father Xenophilius had gone to hunt down a snorkack sighting at the Greasy Grass Settlement. There, they learned of "He Who Slays Walking Carrion," who resided in a remote corner of the magical native American village straddling the tri-state border between the Dakotas and Minnesota on both shores of the Red River of the North. Knowing the phrase "walking carrion" was the standard native American term for vampires — and knowing that true Slayers were always young _**women**_! — Xenophilius and Luna went off to investigate…and got a chance to meet an immortal legend. That had been quite the exposé in the _Quibbler_ and publications for non-human magicals such as _The News of the Magical World_…though many readers of the _Quibbler_ found it hard to believe that a MUGGLE MAN of all things could be so feared by vampires of all stripes, even the demon-powered beings like the infamous Angelus. "She's done a lot of things, both here on Earth and on Nerio."

"Not surprising," Lisa mused.

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked.

"It's the basic creed of Zoroastrianism, 'Mione. 'Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.'"

The normal-born from Crawley blinked before she nodded. "Right…" She then hummed. "Odd that a girl from _Japan_ of all places would embrace **that** faith."

"That struck me as odd as well, Miss Granger," Lincoln noted. "I asked her about that. After a little prodding, she confessed that — where she comes from — she first learned of Master Zaraϑuštra's philosophy via a copy of the role playing game _Dungeons and Dragons_." As Hermione and Luna gaped and the other women blinked in confusion, he chuckled. "That surprised me. She was embarrassed to admit that, but she then said that when she came here from wherever she hails from, she learned there were many others who worship Ahura Mazdā and she went out to look in on them. Soon enough, she began reading the Avesta and started seeing the truth behind what she had first learned in a role playing game. Soon enough, she converted over — she said her parents were Roman Catholics — and desires to undergo a proper navjote when she can get the chance. However, her friends…" He shrugged. "It all depends on them and whatever is happening to them."

The others nodded before Susan perked. "What's a 'role playing game?'"

"It's…a long story, Susan," Hermione advised after taking a deep breath, once more finding herself wishing that the old Muggle Studies course at Hogwarts when she and her peers had gone through the school had not been so backward and out of date.

_Then again_, she mused to herself. _Is it wise for people to learn_ that_…?!_

* * *

Sutton Coldfield (outside of Birmingham), a house on Streely Lane in Sutton Park, an hour after lunch…

"Dear God, Pierus! Are you JOKING?!"

"I wish I wasn't, Orion. I wish to God I wasn't…"

Staring at the older man now seated across from him in his living room, Orion Matthews tried not to scream in outrage over what had just been revealed about Pierus Collins' granddaughter…which, as the current Viscount of Sutton knew, would automatically involve his oldest daughter. "So that brat Malfoy isn't going to just lay down and die finally?!" the balding brown-haired man with the pale blue eyes snarled before shaking his head. "I wish to God that Narcissa had poisoned that idiot when she found out about her daughter…though it took her bloody long enough to do that, for Merlin's sake! Even if Raven is now lovers with Arthur Weasley's youngest son, she's got a much better head on her shoulders than her brother." He then chuckled. "Then again, the teachers at Meridiana were always a better lot than what we dealt with, eh?"

"Oh, there're good and bad teachers no matter where you go," the older man mused before he sipped the wine that had been offered to him by Orion's wife Diana. The latter — who had been ennobled as the Baroness of Coldfield after the Defunct Lords Act had been removed from the magical law rolls — was a normal-born Hufflepuff who had been a peer of the Marauders, Lily Evans and Severus Snape, attending Hogwarts from 1971 to 1978. She attracted the attention of Orion — he was a year older than she — early on even if he had been a Slytherin pureblood. Showing friendship to a "mudblood" back in those days could have earned him the ire of the Death Eaters hadn't Pierus' daughter Napaeae — who had also become close friends to the-then Diana Faulkner — arranged to have her father shield Birmingham from Voldemort as he had done to northern Cheshire.

That hadn't spared the Matthewses from the ugly ravages of the Purification Wars, however. Orion's oldest son Charles — despite his half-blood status; his ancestry made him effectively the same as Harry Potter himself! — had been marked in his seventh year at Hogwarts, recruited thanks to Draco Malfoy at Voldemort's prompting to find a way to get through the magical shielding that sealed off all of metropolitan Birmingham from the reach of the Death Eaters. Unfortunately, he never got the chance to gain control of those wards. When Voldemort's people seized the Ministry of Magic, the Queen issued several Magical Royal Proclamations that crippled the government of Pius Thicknesse. Within an hour of Azkaban being rendered lifeless thanks to Mun Aesup, the Queen's proclamation declaring a state of magical rebellion was read out over the Wizarding Wireless Network — seized by Orion and Diana with help from Pierus, his wife Delilah, daughter Napaeae and son-in-law Herodotus, not to mention some friends — which galvanized the wand wizards in Britain into action and turned them wholesale against Voldemort and his people. Atop that, the news of the reopening of Gonebren — thanks to the imprisonment of Delores Umbridge and Albert Runcorn by the Boy-Who-Lived, who had been given the keys to the Maze Amongst the Rocks by the Queen for the duration of the emergency — marked the raising of the black flag by Voldemort's enemies. From that point on, no mercy or quarter would be shown to those who bore the Dark Mark or those who supported them.

Death Eater Season had been declared "open."

And there would be no bag limit.

Even worse, an old enemy of traditional British wizarding society — one who had been training the Boy-Who-Lived and his allies during the 1996-97 school year despite all of Albus Dumbledore's attempts at blocking access to Harry out of some mistaken belief that the lad's power of love ALONE would be enough to deal with Voldemort once and for all — decided to add a little spice to the Second Purification War…

…and demonstrated yet again how ultimately _**stupid**_ it was to piss off the Dark Lady of the Orient…

* * *

_Chalcot Wood (ten kilometres east of south from Birmingham), just northeast of the M40/M42 interchange, Sunday 13 July 1997, after dawn… _

_"Have you got through to that thing yet?!" _

_A grunt responded from the former Unspeakable who was trying to lance through the layers of protective spells that blocked him from destroying the ward stone located close to the wide sweep of concrete and asphalt that allowed muggles in their ghastly, noisy automobiles to move on and off the motorways that connected metropolitan Birmingham north to Worcester, southwest to Bristol and southeast to London. "This thing is a lot harder than the normal run of ward stones, Charles," Augustus Rookwood growled as he tried not to glare at the idiot half-blood who had been recruited into Voldemort's forces at the spring solstice thanks to what the Death Eaters and their Snatcher allies were being forced to do here and in a few other places across the United Kingdom now to get at those they wanted finally destroyed. "Didn't you learn ANYTHING from your father as to how these damned things were set up?!" _

_"No!" Charles Matthews admitted. "I wasn't able to corner Father about these wards before the Dark Lord ordered Scrimgeour killed! He didn't speak much to me since I took the Mark!" He then blinked as his pale eyes widened. "No…!" _

_"He probably knew you were marked," Nicholas Scabior stated from nearby. The current leader of the Snatchers, he barely escaped either being killed or sent to That Place when several of his friends had dragged in a large group of mudbloods to the Ministry at the start of the month…only to be caught when that Korean bitch Mun Aesup and her friends — including Charles' blood-traitor father and mudblood mother! — seized the Wizarding Wireless Network to read the Queen's proclamation declaring Pius Thicknesse's ministry illegal and unworthy of recognition either by the Crown or the International Conference of Magical Communities. At that time, Scabior and his team had been up north in Scotland searching for mudbloods to send them to Azkaban…which had been DESTROYED by Mun thanks to a MESON BOMB of all things, killing off all the Dementors along the way! "These wards must be attuned to the Dark Mark!" he added. "Augustus' friends couldn't get into this damned town twenty years ago and they're still…!" _

_A horse's bray then echoed through the thick trees of the wood. _

_Everyone paused on hearing that before they looked around to find where that noise had come from. Of course, given the density of Chalcot Wood, visibility was restricted even if the noise from the nearby motorways echoed through the trees. "There's no horse farm close to here!" David Bancroft, Scabior's second-in-command in charge of the Snatchers, said. "Where the hell did that come from?! Can anyone see anything?!" _

_"I can't!" Jennifer Clegg stated as she drew her wand… _

_…just as a miasmic fog began to seep between the trees towards them. _

_As the Death Eaters and their allies all blinked in confusion — being British-born, they were used to the rapid changes of the weather in their homeland…but THIS was too sudden even for the English Midlands! — the braying noise of more horses echoed all around them. Listening to that sound, Rookwood blinked as he tried to determine what sort of equine it was…before his skin paled as the snarling echo in that sound clicked in, making him remember very dark tales from his childhood… _

_…and what happened to his granduncle Algernon in India during Tsukuyomi's War. _

_"Nightmares…!" he hissed out. _

_Everyone gaped at him. "What?!" Clegg cried out. _

_"Nightmares, Jenni!" Rookwood exclaimed as he stood, scanning around for the source of those hideous noises, now accompanied by the thunder of hoof beats on soft ground indicative of a troop's worth of riders coming their way. "That means…!" _

_"_**POTENTIO MUTIPLO MORSMORDRE CRUCIO!**_" _

_All the marked Death Eaters, including Augustus Rookwood and Charles Matthews, howled with agony as faint bolts of crimson energy lashed out from a half-dozen places all around them. As they collapsed to their knees, grabbing their left arms as they tried to fight off the horrid, scalding pain ripping through their bodies through their Dark Marks, the Snatchers all levelled their wands at the possible source-points of those Cruciatus curses. "SNATCH THE BASTARDS!" Scabior snarled out. "_**STUPEFY!**_" _

_Bolts of stunning energy lashed out…to no apparent effect; the torture curses on the Dark Marks continued on as the Death Eaters screamed out in agony. "Where the hell are they?!" Bancroft snarled. "I can't see a damned thing in this soup!" _

_"You weren't supposed to, staleblood." _

_The balding, middle-aged man slowly turned… _

_…before the business end of a rather LARGE key struck his chest. _

_"_**GONEBREN, 'A' BLOCK!**_" _

_Bancroft howled as he vanished in a flash of light. Hearing the name of That Place, the other Snatchers screamed out in mortal terror as they realized they were facing someone who had the magical keys to the darkest place in all the British Isles…and were willing to use them to unleash Hell Itself on Voldemort's allies. "WHO'S OUT THERE?!" Scabior screamed out. "COME OUT AND FACE US, YOU COWARDS!" _

_"Why should we oblige staleblood, inbred filth like you, Nicholas?" _

_He tensed. "Loony Lovegood…!" _

_"Excuse me, but that's a friend of mine you just insulted, Scabior!" another woman's voice challenged from somewhere else, making the Snatchers spin around. _

_"WEASLEY!_ **STUPEFY!**_" Clegg screamed out. _

_Several of her friends did the same thing…but again, it was to no effect. "What idiots!" a third woman's voice sneered from elsewhere. "Don't you know your magical history and what Tsukiko-sensei used to put down so many during the War of Liberation while you inbred stalebloods competed with Grindelwald for control of Europe?!" _

_"GRANGER!" Scabior snarled. "SHOW YOURSELF, MUDBLOOD! HOW DARE YOU…?!" _

_A gunshot echoed from somewhere as a geyser of blood and torn flesh exploded from Scabior's abdomen. He gurgled in shock as a storm of pain flooded his mind before he dropped to his knees, a look of disbelief appearing on his face before he collapsed to his side. The other Snatchers gaped in horror on seeing their leader SHOT like that — a wizard or witch using_ **muggle** _weapons against other wizards or witches was seen as the lowest creature on the planet…which clearly showed that Undesirable Number Two (as Hermione Granger had been termed by the Thicknesse ministry) had to be caught and eliminated as soon as possible — before tendrils of the fog surrounding them snared their wand hands to yank away their primary means of defending themselves. Several moved to activate their portkeys to teleport away from Chalcot Wood to safety…only to find that they now didn't work. As the beams of cursing energy that had burned through the Death Eaters slowly faded, people began to emerge from the fog, all mounted on jet black horses with burning manes and hoofs sparking on the ground. _

_As they took in the people now gazing without pity on them, the Snatchers were quick to realize five of them: Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, his sister Ginny, Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom; they were people who had been involved in defeating the Death Eaters at the Department of Ministries the previous spring. Accompanying the members of the "Ministry Six" were five unknown women their age, dressed in the white-and-red robes of Japanese Shintō shrine maidens despite their clearly being European. As they emerged into the light, the Snatchers then gaped on recognizing two of those women. _

_Raven Malfoy and Cassiopeia Lestrange. _

_Two women who should be DEAD… _

_…but, thanks to the Curse of Helga Hufflepuff and the help of someone — neither Raven nor Cassiopeia had revealed who to the_ Quibbler _when they and their friend Rose Potter were interviewed by Luna after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries as to how they had been given new life in the first place; when pressed by Luna, Cassiopeia attributed such an act to an "angel of the stars" — who had discovered their living spirits and the spirits of many others across the British Isles in the mid-1980s, now lived…and had gone to Meridiana in the hills of northern Wales to learn their magic. _

_And — after their graduation and promotion to the rank of Discipula Magi — had been apprenticed to the most feared Dark Lady in recent history. _

_Remembering that factoid about Draco Malfoy's sister and Bellatrix Lestrange's daughter, Clegg blinked as her eyes focused on the dark-haired witch riding beside the newly-ennobled Marquess of Holdenhurst. Noting the physical similarities between this woman and Neville, the Snatchers quickly realized this was his once-lost sister Grace Longbottom, who had been stillborn in St. Mungo's thanks to the Lestranges and the younger Barty Crouch…but was clearly alive and well. _

_And was obviously ready to help her blood-traitor brother ensure the mudbloods would conquer wizarding Britain and wipe out a thousand years of culture once and for all. _

_"Don't expect any help from your friends in the Forest of Dean, by the way." _

_Eyes locked on Hermione. "What the hell does THAT mean, mud-…?!" one of the other Snatchers snarled…before his voice caught in his throat on seeing her level a silver gun at him. "Y-y-y-you can't u-u-use th-that…!" _

_"Shut up, you pathetic waste of staleblood flesh!" the normal-born from West Sussex snarled as she cocked the hammer of the specially-modified Webley Mark VI .455 revolver; the weapon had been provided to her by goblin gunsmiths to help protect her against the hordes of Fenrir Greyback. "If it hasn't sunk into that empty cesspool between your ears by now, staleblood, you have NO Ministry and NO Wizengamot to support you, much less the half-blood_ **bastard child** _you ultimately serve!" As the Snatchers all snarled on hearing Hermione call Voldemort "half-blood" and "bastard child," she gave them a mirthless smile. "That was wiped out two weeks ago thanks to the Queen! As for your friends in the Forest of Dean, our former classmate Sally-Anne Perks and the Meretrice sisters — who, by the way, are all Meridiana alumni thanks ultimately to Riddle and his friends years ago! — wiped out that camp and freed your hostages. All your friends are now in Gonebren entertaining the Hollows!" As her foes quailed on hearing That Name, she then smiled. "Oh, watch this!" she then teased before she, Ginny and Luna exchanged looks. _

_"_**VOLDEMORT! VOLDEMORT! VOLDEMORT! VOLDEMORT! VOLDEMORT! VOLDEMORT!**_" _

_Hope bloomed amongst the Snatchers on hearing them chant the Dark Lord's battle name…which then turned to knee-weakening despair on seeing nothing happen. As the Death Eaters who had come with them continued to moan in agony from the multiple doses of the Cruciatus that had been applied on their Marks by Raven and her friends, the female member of the Golden Trio shrugged as she pulled her revolver back to hold it close to her shoulder. "The Taboo is gone," Hermione said. "The Trace is no more. Even the kids who just finished their first year at Hogwarts can defend their homes and families from your friends. All they have to do is call out Gonebren's name…and the Hollows take the trash away!" As the Snatchers gargled on hearing that, she smiled. "I figure that by the end of next month, Riddle's forces will all be BRAIN DEAD!" _

_"It won't be much of a loss, 'Mione," Ron added. "Given how inbred these losers are…!" _

_"Damn straight about that!" Ginny sneered. _

_"How could you, Weasley?!" Clegg then challenged before she glared at Neville. "And what about you, Longbottom?! You're PUREBLOODS! You're much better than mudblood filth like Granger, to say anything of Potter's bitch mother…!" _

_"Oh, you shouldn't have said that," Neville teased. _

_"Agreed," Luna breathed out as she looked off to her right towards the east. "Tsukiko-sensei doesn't like it when people insult her students…" _

_Horses hooves echoed through the fog as the Snatchers all spun around… _

_…just as a form dressed in solid white samurai armour complete with protective helmet and a crimson horned oni mask over the face swept in at full gallop on the back of a well-muscled nightmare, drawing back a glowing silver katana… _

_…while Augustus Rookwood — who, thanks to his having endured the after-effects of his lord's mercurial mood swings for years, could recover faster from prolonged or multiple exposure to the Cruciatus than any of his current companions — staggered to his feet. _

_He didn't see his death coming at him until his head was cleaved right off the neck! _

_As the Snatchers watched in mute horror on seeing one of Voldemort's senior fighters literally become a head shorter, Luna turned and let out a shrill whistle with her lips and fingers. The air around them then chilled to near-freezing as the fog seemed to transform into barely humanoid figures dressed in clothing that spanned the ages…and whose eyes glowed with righteous fire. "All the unmarked traitors, my friends…_**GONEBREN, 'A' BLOCK!**_" the daughter of the owner of the_ Quibbler _bellowed as she held out the sword-sized glowing skeleton key that would unlock the gates of That Place. _

**«Consider it done, Milady!»** _a cackling male voice then responded from somewhere. _

_The Snatchers — even the badly-wounded Nicholas Scabior — croaked out in mortal terror before they were literally encompassed by the Hollows and made to vanish, teleported to the dark moors of Cornwall and the hellish prison deep within. As the air temperature slowly returned to normal, the rider who had just beheaded Rookwood calmly came up to gaze without pity at the other Death Eaters. As Charles tried to grab his wand, a gloved hand reached out to wandlessly yank it — and the other dropped wands — into the grasp of Rookwood's executioner. With a slice of the katana, the wands were cut in half before the pieces were tossed contemptuously aside. While the other Death Eaters blearily looked up at the ghastly image looming over them, the rider calmly sheathed the katana before reaching up to pull the mask away from his face, revealing… _

_"P-p-Potter…?!" Charles sputtered out in disbelief. _

_"Good morning, Lord Potter. A pleasant morning, isn't it?" _

_Harry looked towards the ward stone that Rookwood had been trying to destroy, nodding his head. "Lady Matthews, good morning," he said as Diana Matthews came up out of the fog, escorted by another nightmare rider in the robes of a Shintō miko…and who looked very much like a reborn Lily Potter save for reading glasses over her eyes. "I'm glad that Rose was able to find you and bring you here to see this. Seems you have a bit of a pest problem." He waved nonchalantly to the Death Eaters on the ground nearby. _

_"So I noticed," the silver-haired woman with the dark eyes hummed as she gazed in contempt at the half-dozen people who had come here to break into the protected zone her husband's family had established years before in and around Birmingham. Her eyes briefly stopped on her eldest son, whom she had given birth to right out of Hogwarts, before they gazed on the others. "Emil Hostina, Courtney Fearon, Penelope McGhie, Caroline Dorvas, Peter Reed…and Charles Nomen Nescio," she declared with a cold voice. As Charles croaked on hearing the Latin term for "I do not know the name" applied to him — which indicated he had been legally disowned and disinherited from his family; such people were often called with the mocking term "No Name" by people who knew of such a ghastly fate…which made him lower than a mudblood in the eyes of pureblood traditionalists as a family name meant EVERYTHING in British wizarding society — and the other Death Eaters paled, Diana turned to leave. "Kindly remove this trash, Lord Potter. We don't want the normals to have to deal with them." _

_Harry nodded. "As you wish." _

_"Mother…!" _

_Diana stopped before she coldly gazed on the young man who was her son now only in genetics. "For your treason against the Crown and Magic itself, you are dead to us all, Charles. If my eldest daughter defies her father's wishes, she will join you amongst the Nameless." As Charles paled on hearing what his parents were prepared to do to his beloved sister, she shook her head. "Lord Potter, kill him first," she then asked as she indicate her former son. "Behead him and deliver the head with my husband's sincerest complements to Miss Turpin in repayment for the loss of her parents." _

_"M-mother…!" _

_"No problem at all," Harry declared as magic billowed in his right hand. _

_"_**ANIMAE GLADIUM!**_" _

_A second later, multiple shrieks of agony echoed through Chalcot Wood… _

_…though Rose Potter was quick to see Diana Matthews turn away from the scene of her son having his soul being burned out of his body, the older woman's eyes glistening with tears…_

* * *

"So what do we do?" Orion wondered before sipping his wine. "I don't want to lose any more of my children to that bastard Riddle…even now, thirteen years later!"

Pierus sighed. "I don't blame you, my friend…"

* * *

The City of Westminster, the residence of the Ambassador of the Republic of New Avalon to the Court of St James's on the second floor at 221B Baker Street near Regent's Park, that moment…

"Didn't this bother you, Alice?"

Alice Holmes perked on hearing that amused question from the Man-Who-Won before she giggled. "Actually, no," the dark-haired tomboy with the sorrowful brown eyes — she reminded Harry Potter of a picture he had seen of the famous singer Lillie Langtry, the once-lover of the future King Edward VII who was believed by some to be the inspiration of the character of Irene Adler from _A Scandal in Bohemia_ — mused as she proceeded to prepare tea for her guests. "Father was a big fan of Sir Arthur's works; that's the reason he took the family name 'Holmes' when he first was assigned here on Earth in 1972. When the Society learned that after I made my first public appearance after the Liberation, they wouldn't HEAR of me living anywhere else but here."

"At least the museum on the first floor's not been altered," Percy Weasley noted as he gazed out onto the busy street that served as part of the A41 trunk road that connected downtown London with Birkenhead. On seeing his host gaze in surprise at him, the Senior Undersecretary smiled. "My father's fascination with normals infected all of my siblings and I to one extent or another," he explained. "Like your father, I came to like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works. I was actually surprised to learn than when those stories were set, this part of Baker Street wasn't actually named that."

"What was it named?" Kingsley Shacklebolt asked; he had also read some of those stories, but he wasn't a Sherlockologist by any stretch of the imagination.

"'Upper Baker Street,'" Percy answered. "Separate house numbers from the main street, which only extended up to Crawford Street four blocks down from here. The part between Crawford and Marylebone Road was called 'York Place' for the longest time before they decided to name the whole stretch as 'Baker Street.'" He nodded his thanks as Alice handed him a cup of English breakfast tea. "Actually, this part of the building should be properly numbered as 239 Baker Street. But they decided to tweak the numbers when they set up that museum downstairs, not to mention the bookstore on the ground floor."

The others laughed as they were served. After that was done, Alice took her chair. "I received a report from the watchmistress aboard the _Freedom_; that's one of the Kashin-class ships that was seized in the Liberation," she reported. "Roughly around the time of that incident at Nurmengard this morning, a total of 4,400 gestation tubes with fully templated bioroids appeared on the ship's main hangar deck. The gestation units themselves had been removed from the factory between 1930 and 1935 for deployment to places in Europe, northern Africa, the Soviet Union and the Middle East. Forty-four separate observers with a hundred bioroids each…though none of them were templated and woken by the time World War Two started and all contact with them was lost." She shrugged. "It was seen as an accepted hazard of the time. The Great War saw dozens of observers — though fortunately, without bioroid assistants as this was in the early days of our race's enslavement — killed off because they were in the wrong places at the wrong time."

"Thank Merlin for that," Kingsley noted. "Has President Otako said anything to you or your counterparts about what will happen with Brigadier Gibbon and her people?"

"Right now, we're more concerned about helping them adjust to being in the year 2010 when they last were awake and active in 1945, Kingsley," Alice stated. "They've missed out on sixty-five years of life being frozen in those gestation units in that cave. Even if they fought as allies — effectively unwilling ones at that because of the magical loyalty oath that they were forced to make to Adolf Hitler as part of Thoughtmaster-prime Grindelwald's alliance with that man — of the Nazis, they deserve to enjoy something of a normal life under their control."

"If it was only that simple," the Minister for Magic breathed out. "Much that I personally — and I'm speaking for Percy and Harry here — would agree to that fact, Madame Holmes, there are people still alive in this country who did suffer from what the Schwarze Mädchen did during that war. Relatives of those killed when Margareta Hecht led her team to the Ministry to destroy the loyalty stones used then to keep the colonial magicals under the ultimate control of the Crown through Minister Fenwick."

"Not to mention those families who lost fortunes when their businesses in the colonies were wiped out after Grindelwald's War and the War of Liberation," Percy added. "My own family was one of them, in fact." He then smiled. "Personally, after meeting up with some of my grandfather's old playmates from India and learning of what they felt like after Sergeant-Major Hecht and her friends did what they did, I wouldn't care about that."

"Nor would I," Harry added. "My own family had interests in Asia and Africa as well. My great-grandfather owned farms in Tanzania and Kenya; he lost everything when local ministries of magic were formed after 1946 and declared themselves independent from the Ministry here in London. From what I've learned over the years, he didn't mind it that much even if his income dropped considerably because of what happened. He didn't care too much for the Ministry's approach to the colonies in Africa and Asia."

"So there might be private moves to seek redress?" Alice asked.

"Effectively yes," Kingsley noted. "Officially, the actions of the Schwarze Mädchen were exonerated in 1950 when the ICMC passed a binding resolution concerning them." He then chuckled. "All the nations of Europe — save the Soviet Union, their client states, Iceland, West Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Italy, Spain and Portugal — voted against that, but the rest of the world passed it and made it binding on all members and the societies they represented. Atop that, there is the Statute of Limitations Act passed in 1999. That was forced on us originally by the leaders of the families who supported Voldemort as a way of helping people avoid Azkaban, but we were able to work it around to make it run parallel to the normal system. Thus, since it has been sixty-five years since the Schwarze Mädchen were active fighters, there's no way those who would seek redress for lost revenues and income to get their day in front of the Wizengamot."

"As for whatever deaths were caused by the Schwarze Mädchen, that falls under the very hazy rules of warfare," Harry added. "Yes, Master Gellert was a Dark Lord by every definition of the term. But he was ALSO the Reich Minister of Magical Affairs acting under the ultimate authority of the Führer — who was Germany's head of state and head of government at the time — when he launched his war against European magical societies in 1939 parallel to the European side of World War Two. And since we didn't and still don't require wizards and witches to make some binding oath of loyalty to the Crown as that violates clauses in the Separation Act, we can't really view Brigadier Gibbon and her friends as 'traitors.'" He shrugged. "After all, they came from Depression-era normal Britain — where their parents were mostly on the dole — to spend seven years at Hogwarts, then were literally thrown to the dogs because of the hiring practices of the time period. It's no wonder that when Master Gellert began espousing his Greater Good theories, people like the Gibbon sisters flocked to it. They felt they had no life to live here and wouldn't want to go back to a normal life without being able to use magic openly."

"That remained true in a lot of ways even after that war," Percy added.

Harry nodded. "What about other nations?" Alice asked.

"Save for Germany, Austria and Italy, all the other nations whose citizens fought as part of the Schwarze Mädchen find themselves in similar situations legally," Kingsley noted. "Supreme Mugwump Ramirez has been on the floo all day reminding my counterparts in Paris, Brussels, the Hague and elsewhere about the 1950 resolution that wiped the slate clean concerning those girls. There's been the odd grumble or two, but the laws on the Continent were restructured effectively by the Americans after the war to follow their views on personal liberty; what we FINALLY were able to catch up with in many places here after Voldemort was dealt with." He sighed. "But…"

"There are chances that people might want to seek them out personally," Alice finished.

He nodded. "Yes."

"What about Germany, Austria and Italy?"

"Since it was discovered that the Schwarze Mädchen — after they were finally freed of their loyalty oath to Hitler — helped track down senior Nazis like Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler to ensure they died or were caught by normal soldiers serving the Allies, the Magische Bundesrat in Bonn and the Magische Volkskongress in East Berlin passed laws endorsing the ICMC resolution in 1950 that wiped the slate clean concerning those of Brigadier Gibbon's subordinates from Germany," Harry answered. "The Magische Bundesrat in Vienna and the Magico Senato in Rome eventually did the same thing at the same time for those girls who came from Austria and Italy. They also agreed to allow the West Germans — and the unified Germans after 1990 — to hold onto what artifacts remained from the Schwarze Mädchen for posterity's sake. Including their wands." He then held up a finger in emphasis. "I will note that the medals those girls won during the war were all altered in 1957 to conform with the laws passed at the time that forbade the wearing of a swastika on any medal awarded during World War Two. Any pure Nazi Party decorations are considered illegal and can't be worn. Proper military medals and decorations such as the various classes of the Iron Cross and wound badges can still be worn, though they were replaced with insignia bearing oak leaf clusters on the crosses."

The others chuckled. "So what about this matter with the daywalker vampires I was told about?" Alice asked. "Why were they there in the first place? What purpose would they have in attacking a whole group of helpless witches in cryogenetic suspension?"

"Unfortunately, thanks to _**her**_, we can't ask any of them," Harry noted, which made Alice roll her eyes. "I know! Given how many titles got slammed on me over the years, just limiting the title to 'her' for that girl is rather overdoing it!" As more laughter filled the room, he added, "I do know that President Lincoln is in Britain at this time; he's staying at the Leaky Cauldron now. I don't know what brought him here, but given that he never leaves North Dakota without reason, it's easy to conclude. Some of his old sparring partners from the time of the Civil War that escaped the Score and Four are in country as well."

"What purpose would they have in gathering here?" she wondered. "We've encountered many vampires since the Liberation. We've no problems with them."

"But they might have problems with you."

Eyes locked on Kingsley. "What do you mean, Kingsley?" Percy asked.

"When Harry spoke about the Score and Four, I remembered that some of the vampires who escaped North America to get away from Mister Lincoln always called him a 'crystal-blood,'" the minister mused. "Albus told me this once when I found a book on vampires in the library at Hogwarts in my fifth year and read about the Rail-Splitter — even if his real identity wasn't publicly known outside America at the time — and what he did between 1865 and 1889. Being called a 'crystal-blood' implied there was mesonium in the blood stream."

"Like the ebony meson _Freiherr_ von Taserich and Master Hosan — not to mention all the people the former loved to experiment on…INCLUDING President Lincoln until General Raeburn got to him! — had in their blood," Percy stated before his eyes widened and he gaped in shock at his host. "Not to mention…"

"Every Avalonian — Terran-form, Terran-turned and Terran-adopted — on the planet and in orbit," the Elder Mother of the Avalonians in Britain said with a nod before she sipped her tea. "They're afraid we're taking away their primary source of food."

"Which you wouldn't ever contemplate doing by force given what happened to your people before February," Kingsley noted before he sighed. "However, all it takes…"

"Is one lunatic to start up a terror campaign," Harry breathed out. "I…" He then perked as his cell phone rang. "Excuse me, please," he said as he pulled his iPhone it out of the pouch on his belt before holding it to his ear. "Potter."

"Hey, Harry! Where are you?!"

"I'm at Alice's flat on Baker Street, 'Mione. What is it?"

"I just spoke to Mister Lincoln," Hermione replied from her office at the Ministry. "He was advised to come to Britain by Elder Tȟatȟáŋka because of a vision the elder had about a whole metric tonne of 'walking carrion' moving to kill off the Space Angels with stolen magic. Given what happened this morning at Nurmengard…"

He moaned. "Oh, great! 'Mione, what's your opinion of the Schwarze Mädchen when it comes to overall magical power? They didn't have the Neuwied Test back then…"

"Given how good and how thorough their training was — which the non-Germans like Brigadier Gibbon were quick to catch up on when they got the chance — before they were sent out into the field, I'd say that even the privates in that group could easily have given Tom some serious problems," his best female friend answered. "Atop that, they're a properly-trained paramilitary force with six years of hard battle experience against all sorts of opponents — even the War Hawks! — under their belts. If you're with Alice right now, you should advise her to pass on to President Otako to hire those girls on as the core element of the permanent Avalonian Defence Force."

He nodded on hearing that. While a separate defence force for those Avalonians who remained now on the bioroid factory hadn't been set up — given the more pressing need to have the United Nations Earth Defence Force stood up, especially in the wake of what the Urusians and the Niphentaxians instigated after the start of the month — there had been talk from time to time to allow a permanent security force to be established there. While many Avalonians still in space held dual citizenship with whatever nation on Earth welcomed them in, there were those who wanted to establish a separate Avalonian colony under Otako Meinyak's direct control. A prospective location for such a colony was a Class M planet not so far from Spotak that was in unclaimed space between that world and the territory of the Seifukusu Dominion which was being eyed for eventual takeover by the joint Earth-New Avalon alliance due to lack of colonization from Dominos and its older colonies. Such a planet would become the "New Avalon" in the Provisional Republic's official name and would be open for immigration to those Terrans who might want to get away totally from any sort of Terran rule. However, any plans to actually settle that planet were on the back burner for the time being. Still, the chances were there that some attack on the inner part of the solar system could press through to the factory itself, so having an "Avalonian defence force" answerable to Otako was seen as logical.

_So why not let it be_ magical _as well?!_ the Man-Who-Won mused before he asked, "Could they survive full-time up there, 'Mione? I know there's magic in that gestation fluid they use to create and template new bodies, but would that be enough for them?"

Hermione sighed. "I think so." She then chuckled. "I wanted to go up there to meet them. You know how I think about them, Harry." As he laughed, she breathed out, "But I want to clear it with you first. I know their legal status is questionable at this time, but they deserve to know that much of what they fought for did come to pass."

Harry nodded. It had always been the basic theme when he and his friends elected in the wake of the Battle of Hogwarts to do the right thing no matter what obstacle got in their way to make their society the best place they could for future generations. Part of that included respecting where the basic attitudes that had driven Voldemort's allies into launch the Purification Wars in the first place came from. Yes, there was simply no way that what political, economic and social gains had been won after 1997 would be allowed to be taken away by the pureblood traditionalists…but there WAS a unique British wizarding culture that had evolved separate of the normal world since 1692 and its good points deserved to be protected and honoured. Of course, opinions on what was "good" and what was "bad" in wizarding Britain varied from person to person and generation to generation…and given how stiff and inflexible the Ministry of Magic and its component organs had been for so long — compounded by the total LACK of general public input into the magical government save for when a Minister for Magic was elected every ten years — any attempts at serious change was always bound to make the traditionalists balk. Atop that, the scale of the violence that rocked the First Purification War in the late 1970s and the early 1980s — topped by the bloody one-sided nature of the Second Purification War as shown during Death Eater Season — made even neutral traditionalists wary of any newfangled thing normal-borns and normal-raised wizards and witches like Harry Potter and Hermione Granger introduced. Yes, Harry had the advantage of being the Man-Who-Won to influence public opinion to his way of viewing things…but he didn't want to have the potential power and influence that title could force on him overwhelm him as the power and adulation showered on Albus Dumbledore after 1945 clearly overcame him.

_Then again, that's part of the reason he wanted me raised away from the magical world_, he mused as he reflected yet again on his early childhood with the Dursleys. "Okay, go ahead, 'Mione," he stated. A quick glance to Kingsley got him a nod of understanding in turn. "Make sure you make it clear to Brigadier Gibbon that any decision concerning them is still pending here and elsewhere save in Berlin, Vienna and Rome," he added. "Tell them about all the legal changes we've made over the years. I doubt they'll have any living relatives alive today, but that can be checked on if necessary."

"Alright, Harry," Hermione replied. "Oh, President Lincoln told me that if you wanted to see him, he'll be at the Caldron for the rest of today."

"Fair enough."

* * *

In space aboard the _Freedom_, an hour before supper (London time)…

"My God…this turned out even better than we ever dreamt…"

"It is that, _Mon Général_. Save for Britain, of course."

"Well, they are coming along slowly."

"The fools there still need swift kicks in their collective arses, Jessica."

"True," Jessica Gibbon breathed out as she placed the dataPADD down on the table.

The senior leaders of the Black Maidens were seated around a circular coffee table located in the former captain's meeting room, enjoying drinks and soft snacks while they scanned through the incredible amount of data that their new hosts had procured for them concerning the post-1945 history of Earth's magical societies. Thanks to the wonderful ease by which information could be shared via mind-melding — as taught to them by the healers as they were helped through the Awakening over the last few hours — learning how to operate the hand-held computers and navigate the HyperNet had been child's play. Despite the understandable sense of dislocation all of them felt — it had come to the point where Elizabeth Gibbon ordered all the junior officers and ranks to go find places to sleep; fortunately for the Schwarze Mädchen, the living quarters of the _Freedom_ had yet to be stripped of their furniture — on learning that _**sixty-five years**_ had passed since their last conscious moment on the grounds of Nurmengard, the love and loyalty all of the Black Maidens felt for each other was as solid as diamond.

That had been Gellert Grindelwald's original intention when he began gathering the first recruits into his special battalion — later expanded to a brigade — of combat sorceresses in the mid-1930s. Seeing that the cronyism and arrogance of traditional magical enclaves across Europe was squeezing out skilled normal-borns as they graduated from places like Hogwarts, Beauxbâtons and Drumstrang, the then-master of the Elder Wand concluded that the best way to make his vision of the Greater Good — where the Statute of Secrecy would be done away with once and for all and magical and normal would be united once more as one society…with magicals, of course, ruling over normals — more acceptable to the masses was to recruit people who could effectively operate in both worlds. While the Magische Reichsarmee he raised was filled with wizards and witches of all origins — normal-borns, half-bloods, disenfranchised or normal-sympathetic purebloods and hybrids with various magical creatures — who wanted a chance to launch a world-wide revolution, the Schwarze Mädchen was unique both in the origins of its members and the fact that all of them were women.

Unfortunately, it was around that very time that one critical development in normal society was starting to be noted: The rise of the so-called "mystery men," the first widespread generation of non-magical metahumans. Because of that — tacked onto the loss of the Steel Angels in 1937 thanks to their sensing the coming of World War Two and their adamant unwillingness to harm organic humans — Grindelwald had no choice but to make compromises with the Nazi hierarchy to get normal support to ensure his vision stood a good chance of actually coming to fruition. The one compromise that impacted the Magische Reichsarmee the most was the imposition of the _Führerprinzip_ and a magical oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. That — which had been suggested by the leader of the Schutzstaffel, Heinrich Himmler, as Germany began preparing for war — ensured that with a quick reminder of that oath, no magical warrior obeying Grindelwald would do anything to topple the normal power structure or rebel against the Führer.

Fortunately for the Black Maidens, Hitler didn't use them in long-distance strikes against normal targets; that was the basic mission given to the Übermenschen Gruppe on its founding in 1940. As the Nazi war machine rampaged across Europe, elements of the Magische Reichsarmee advanced with them to suppress local magical resistance to the invaders. While the majority of the magical fighters serving the Dark Lord of Europe were busy keeping resistance down, Grindelwald — honouring his alliance with Yomigawa Tsukiko — directed the Black Maidens into destroying powerful artifacts in Paris, Brussels, the Hague and London that allowed the French, the Belgians, the Dutch and the British to maintain overall control over the magicals in their colonial empires. Once that was done by mid-1943, whatever power various magical ministries or ministries-in-exile could summon from the colonies — those that hadn't been liberated by Tsukuyomi's forces — was gone.

While the European side of World War Two was starting to go bad for Adolf Hitler, the magical war happening at the same time appeared to be going Gellert Grindelwald's way.

However, by the time the Allies landed at Normandy, the Übermenschen Gruppe operating in North America had been effectively wiped out by the War Hawks and the Liberty Legion. Now free to be used as an offensive force, Dean Raeburn's team came across the Atlantic and, basing themselves at Hogwarts, began launching raid after raid across occupied Europe to brutally whittle down whatever metahuman forces the Nazis still had active that could oppose the Allied advance on Germany. That eventually brought them into direct conflict with Grindelwald's forces, including the Schwarze Mädchen. And while the Black Maidens survived their encounters with the War Hawks with no fatalities, they DID endure many injuries that knocked down the brigade's total combat strength to a quarter by the start of 1945.

Ironically, the sheer brute power that Dean Raeburn, Heather Thompkins and Jessica Dover — supported by the deadly marksmanship of Martin Larsden — could bring to bear against their foes eventually began to _terrify_ the very people they were trying to _**liberate**_! It finally got to the point where Albus Dumbledore — who had pretty well stayed out of active efforts to put his old lover down while he taught at Hogwarts — pleaded with the Protector of All Life to allow him to muster an all-magical force to deal with Grindelwald in a final winner-take-all strike to end the magical war in Europe. Raeburn — with profound reluctance and an unwillingness to split the magical and normal sides of World War Two apart in her own mind; because of that all-encompassing worldview, she only desired to have the damned war in all its aspects done and over with! — eventually agreed. By then, a desperate Grindelwald — who couldn't really depend on Josef von Taserich anymore; the losses in the Übermenschen Gruppe and the several times the _Rittmeister_ had fought Raeburn personally had taken their toll on the man — contacted the Mage of the Beginning on Nerio and brokered an alliance. It was a risky thing; many amongst the therianthrope tribes on Mars' sister planet had little cause to like Earth humans — especially magical humans! — and the Life-Maker's own designs for Nerio would eventually spell the end of all magic on Earth. But it was done.

That agreement was immediately noted on by the War Hawks' ally from Russia, Vladímir Rusalovič Tayčeško — the immortal Praetorian Guardian known commonly as "Lord Rjazán'" — which prompted him to take a more active role in dealing with the Nazis beyond keeping the various Germanic and Latin deities from openly interfering in mortal affairs. At his suggestion, Raeburn put Dumbledore through a personal combat training program that sharpened the transfiguration master's already excellent duelling skills to an unprecedented degree. Tayčeško also contacted Duncan McLeod to gather a force of Immortals to help out in the attack at Nurmengard; until then, the undying foundling swordsmen had stayed out of any magical or metahuman battles even if many were serving as soldiers in various armies across the planet. One of them had been a white Australian named Davis Wisden, who had endured a Dark Quickening in late 1944 and — by the time that V-E Day came around in early May of 1945 — was barely able to keep the tsunami of violent urges he had absorbed from his last kill at bay.

It would turn out to be a very wise move…

"_Mon Dieu_! Even after we poured out magic into the World-Gate, it wasn't enough to stop the Nerioites?!" the French-born commander of the brigade headquarters company and Elizabeth's brigade major, Lila Fontaine, breathed out. "Raeburn had to behead one of the Immortals and use the power of the Quickening to destroy the World-Gate!"

"Well, I've always read that whenever Tayčeško makes a suggestion, it's for a _**damned**_ good reason," Margareta Hecht noted as she crossed her arms. By now, all of the Black Maidens were dressed in basic utility uniforms from the armies of their homelands, with equivalent rank insignia on their tunics. "What do we do now?" she then asked.

Eyes locked on Elizabeth. Noting that, the Yorkshire-born brigadier tried not to blush too much on sensing all of her senior staff gaze expectantly on her. She hadn't really aspired to become the leader of the Black Maidens when she had travelled to Germany some months before the invasion of Poland. Like her twin sister and the thirty-six other British witches that had jumped across the North Sea to fight for Grindelwald during the 1930s, Elizabeth had become very disenfranchised by the hideously corrupt society she tried to become a part of after graduating from Hogwarts. She really had no bonds to home anymore and was willing to try something new and exciting; after all, none of the teachers from Headmaster Armando Dippet on down had shown any of their normal-born charges the hidden truths of what British magical society was really like once they were free of Hogwarts.

When Elizabeth — who had graduated with top NEWTs in 1938 — found out she couldn't hope to apprentice with a local transfiguration master to gain a mastery of her own because of her "muggle" origins, she was soon contacted by Enid Geraint. The first British witch to travel to Germany and join the Black Maidens, Enid — a Welsh woman who had been four years ahead of the Gibbon twins at Hogwarts — persuaded Elizabeth and Jessica of the righteous nature of Grindelwald's cause and the need to finally destroy the International Confederation of Wizards…especially when they got the chance to go on a trip to Japan to witness first-hand how European magicals had so badly enslaved local magicals in Asia and elsewhere thanks to Yomigawa Tsukiko.

Thanks to some excellent combat training thanks to Grindelwald and the best magical duellists in Germany, Italy and Japan available at the time, Elizabeth soon made a name for herself as a quick thinker and a skilled warrior. She had been the one who led the mission to Paris in late 1940 to ultimately destroy the loyalty stones enslaving thousands of innocent colonials. Originally assembled by Napoleon's magical advisers from a stele dating all the way from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of ancient Egypt which found at Rašīd during his campaign there in the late 1790s, those particular loyalty stones had helped the French colonial authorities wipe out several traditional enclaves in what today was Cambodia and Vietnam. During that particular battle — while the rest of her platoon of foreign volunteers were busy laying waste to the Ministry headquarters and seizing whatever objects that might interest Grindelwald's own researchers — Elizabeth personally duelled several experienced French hit-wizards to the death, escaping with only a few bruises. That — tacked onto missions in Poland against magical partisans in the winter of 1940-41, then later personally leading a platoon of Black Maidens into Serbia in the spring of 1941 to wipe out a rogue coven of vampires killing German soldiers and civilians alike — would see Elizabeth Gibbon become the first foreign-born magical warrior of Germany to be awarded the Iron Cross for bravery in action; she would eventually end the war with the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, which had been awarded to her by the Führer personally in late 1943.

Remembering that afternoon at the Berghof with Hitler and his advisers, Elizabeth fought back tears of shame as she sat back in her chair. It had been so innocent back then. The Führer — an avowed vegetarian who loathed smoking and drinking and enjoyed simple things…even if there were rumours of sexual deviancy; she had heard of what had happened to his niece Geli Raubal in 1931 — had been a kind host to those Schwarze Mädchen who had been invited to the slopes of the Obersalzberg that day to receive what German soldiers often derisively nicknamed the "tin necktie."

Remembering that, Elizabeth gazed on her brigade sergeant-major. Margareta Hecht — then ranked _Oberscharführerin der Schwarze Mädchen und Oberwachthexe der Magische Reichsarmee_; she would be made _Sturmscharführerin und Stabswachthexe_ at the start of 1944, the same day Elizabeth succeeded Livia Dietrich as the _Reichsführerin_ — would be promoted within the order of the Iron Cross to receive the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds for her leading the attack on London to destroy the British colonial loyalty stones at the Ministry of Magic while Elizabeth was busy in Serbia.

That same operation, Elizabeth mused, also earned Margareta the thanks of the Heavenly Sovereign of Japan as well as the Military Medal of Honour and the fourth class Order of the Sacred Treasure; that had been at the recommendation of Yomigawa Tsukiko. That attack on London, the Black Maidens later learned, ultimately snapped the bonds forced on Gurkha hit-wizards by the Ministry of Magic. This had allowing those poor fellows to return home to the mountains of modern-day Nepal…and allowed Tsukuyomi's best warriors to sweep unchecked across the Subcontinent all the way to Iran!

Yet, after Hitler had taken his own life at the end of April in 1945…!

"Don't feel so bad about it, Sis."

Elizabeth gazed over at Jessica. While the former always adopted a very serious look when it came to styling her hair — she had been a Ravenclaw at Hogwarts — the latter always allowed her blonde locks to flow free. Recalling how Eva Braun had admired such beautiful hair — Jessica herself had been a Gryffindor — when they had been at the Berghof, the leader of the Black Maidens could only moan. "Why, Jess…?"

"We felt ourselves facing the choice of living in one of two different types of Hell," Lila answered on her best friend's behalf. "At the time we put on the black suits, we believed our societies were the worst of the two. We learned differently."

The others ruefully nodded. When the loyalty bond to the Führer had died with him under the garden of the Reichskanzlei in Berlin, the Black Maidens were — like many other Germans — confronted face-first with the horrid revelations about what happened in places like Dachau and Auschwitz. Sickened and ashamed that they — who had fought for the eradication of racism in magical societies — had been associated with the mass murder of _**millions**_ of innocent people in normal society, the Black Maidens burned their Party uniforms on the grounds of Nurmengard. In abandoning the swastika of the Nazis, they gladly took up the timeless symbol — the circle-in-a-vertically divided triangle sign marking the combination of the Cloak of True Invisibility, the Resurrection Stone and the Elder Wand under the control of a supposed "Master of Death" reminded the only American Black Maiden, Third Battalion's _Hauptscharführerin und Hauptwachthexe_ Regina Mitchell, of the logo of the Civil Defence services which came into use in 1939 — of the Deathly Hallows Grindelwald had sought for his whole life. At that time, they simply had no choice but to remain at their master's side even if they were free to disappear into the ruins of normal Europe. Even if the Dark Lord of Europe knew a lot about what his allies had unleashed across Europe, he was still determined to fight to the bitter end…especially since he had learned through sympathetic friends in Britain that his old lover was coming for him. Still, in the period between V-E Day and the Battle of Nurmengard, there had been time for the Black Maidens to atone for their being forced to fight — even by proxy! — for the genocidal monsters that had launched the European side of World War Two in the first place: Margareta hunted down Hitler's personal secretary Martin Bormann and tortured him to death in the ruins of Berlin two days after the Führer killed himself…while Elizabeth and Jessica teamed together to track down Heinrich Himmler and expose him to the British three weeks later.

And then…

"Excuse me."

Elizabeth and her friends turned to gaze on the shy-looking woman standing at the doorway to the meeting room. "What is it?" the commander of the Black Maidens asked.

A deep bow responded. "Please forgive me for disturbing you, Thoughtmistress-prime, but there's a small delegation from Her Majesty's Ministry of Magic here to see you."

Everyone blinked before Margareta sighed. "They're not here to cause trouble, are they?" the native of Gardelegen in modern-day Saxony-Anhalt wondered.

The younger woman rapidly shook her head. "No, ma'am. The leader of the delegation is a normal-born woman named Hermione Granger. She's the Special Adviser on Normal Affairs to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Also with them is a Miss Luna Lovegood, the daughter of the publisher of the _Quibbler_."

Nods from the leaders of the Black Maidens. As they spent the morning and afternoon catching up on the many years they had been forced to miss out on, Elizabeth and her friends had taken note of the various events in Britain and the people involved in them. Thanks to the island nation escaping the ravages of the Magische Reichsarmee, its traditional culture had survived intact even if Albus Dumbledore — using the influence he gained thanks to his leading the successful attack on Nurmengard and personally winning a hard-fought duel against his former lover — had worked to make sure that many of the harsher attitudes that forced two of his prize transfiguration students to fight for Gellert Grindelwald wouldn't have sway over future generations. Dumbledore had made a good attempt at it, especially after his promotion to headmaster of Hogwarts in 1956…but the purebloods who controlled the Wizengamot — and through that organ of government, most other elements of wizarding Britain — fought him openly and covertly as they prayed for someone to come along to lead the traditionalists in restoring things in their society to what was truly "right" and "proper" in their eyes.

Such a leader finally came in the person of Thomas Marvolo Riddle.

When Lila Fontaine had read the self-created battle name of the last living descendant of Salazar Slytherin, she had nearly laughed herself into a heart attack. However, what Voldemort and his allies had done in the 1970s and later in the mid-1990s had been _**no**_ laughing matter. Despite the vicious nature of the war the Schwarze Mädchen had fought between 1939 and 1945, they had done their best to NOT target defenceless children — to say anything of the UNBORN! — when they had run rampant from the Pyrenees to the steppes of Siberia and from the gates of Alexandria in Egypt to the northern mountains of Norway where the Durmstrang Institute was located. The Death Eaters — hearing that term had also caused the Black Maidens to laugh derisively at such a pathetic monicker — hadn't cared a damned bit about who died and why; if their Dark Lord wanted someone to die, that person was killed with no questions asked. What was worse, given that there were many sympathizers to Voldemort's cause across Britain, attempts by the Ministry of Magic to put down the First Purification War never really got anywhere…until a brilliant normal-born witch named Lily Potter sacrificed herself to destroy Voldemort's body in 1981 to save her son Harry.

Of course, given the fact that a baby of _**fifteen months**_ had survived the KILLING CURSE of all things quickly painted a huge target on the head of the "Boy-Who-Lived," thus necessitating his being hidden away in the normal world until it was time for him to go to Hogwarts in 1991. When he did go to that grand old castle in Scotland, Harry hadn't been the least bit prepared for what fate and prophecy would ultimately force on him. Dumbledore was of no help in the long term; the horrors of Grindelwald's War and his steadfast belief in the better angels of human nature — even in the face of what Voldemort's supporters had gladly done years before — would have eventually set Harry up to become a living sacrifice without making said sacrifice ultimately MEAN something. It actually took the direct intervention of the International Conference of Magical Communities via a Meridiana graduate named Nekane Springfield — not to mention Yomigawa Tsukiko herself! — in the summer of 1996 to see Harry trained properly to deal with Voldemort. And once the Boy-Who-Lived was seen as ready to take to the field, he wrecked the Death Eaters in a two-month search-and-destroy campaign that Voldemort's people could not stop until the latest Dark Lord to plague any part of Europe was killed in the Battle of Hogwarts mere days before the start of the 1997-98 school year.

Harry hadn't done it alone, however. Starting from his first year, he had a small circle of friends and allies at his side. Prominent amongst that group were two women named Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood. The former was a normal-born from West Sussex whose intelligence outmatched even Lily Potter's and whose sense of justice was something Elizabeth Gibbon herself could admire. The latter was the only daughter of a minor pureblood family from Devon who was reported to have Seer abilities and who had pursued careers in magical cryptozoology and reporting for a monthly magical news magazine her father Xenophilius published. And while Hermione and Luna weren't the only allies Harry possessed even to today, that both of them were here right NOW…!

"Send them in," Elizabeth bade.

The younger woman nodded before she headed out. A moment later, a group of seven women appearing to be in their early twenties walked into the room, dressed in casual business wear. Leading them was a stunningly attractive woman with wavy dark brown hair and brown eyes full of both knowledge and curiosity. Remembering what she had read of Hermione's biography on the HyperNet, Elizabeth hummed as she and her friends got to their feet. _Amazing she was a Gryffindor_, the leader of the Schwarze Mädchen mused to herself. _With the intelligence she had, she should've been a Ravenclaw._

Hermione's hand immediately came out. "Generalmajorin Gibbon, I presume?"

Elizabeth tried not to snort. "Yes," she responded on grasping the offered hand, her blue-grey eyes twinkled in amusement. "I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you."

The other woman gaped in stunned shock at her before she roared with laughter, making all her companions gaze in confusion at their friend while Elizabeth's friends all rolled their eyes at that odd replay of an historic encounter between two explorers on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in 1871…

_**To be continued…**_

* * *

**WRITER'S NOTES**

1) Notes on the various lordships spoken of here:

**The Marquessate of Halton** (Pierus Collins) — As indicated above, this is named after the borough in Cheshire located at the place where the River Weaver flows into the River Mersey about twelve kilometres east-southeast of Liverpool.

**The Marquessate of Widnes** (Herodotus Runcorn) — As indicated above, this is named after the village of the same name on the north bank of the River Mersey across from Halton itself.

**The Viscountcy of Sutton** (Orion Matthews) — As indicated above, this takes its name from part of the element of the small town where the Matthews Clan currently lives, **Sutton Coldfield**; this town is located seven kilometres north-northeast of downtown Birmingham. **The Barony of Coldfield** (Diana Matthews) is also named in part after Sutton Coldfield.

2) The **Invisibility Task Force** (**ITF**) was an element of the **Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes** (**DMAC**) with the specific task of ensuring all magical creatures resident in the United Kingdom remain invisible to normal discovery. As noted in the first part of the second _Wizards and Avalonians_ story, the whole of the DMAC was made subordinate to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in the post-1997 reforms at the Ministry of Magic.

3) The reforms done to the House of Lords in the **House of Lords Act, 1999** saw the total number of members in the upper chamber of Parliament cut down from a staggering **_1,330_** lords to a more manageable _669_ lords. Of the surviving members of the House of Lords, only ninety-two are **hereditary peers** who could pass on their seats to their children; all others were **life peers**, who cannot pass on their titles to their children.

As an aside, the **Supreme Court of the United Kingdom** was established by law in the **Constitutional Reform Act, 2005** to become the supreme court in all matters under English, Welsh and Northern Irish law as well as Scottish civil law; when it comes to criminal cases in Scotland, the **High Court of Justiciary** in Edinburgh still serves as the supreme court. The Supreme Court also is the highest court of the land when it comes to devolution matters between Parliament in Westminster and the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff and the Northern Ireland Assembly in Belfast.

4) Translations: **Vinur Drekar** — Friend of Dragons; **Sherlockologist** — An expert in **Sherlockology**…which, in essence, makes such a hardcore fan of Sherlock Holmes; **Magische Bundesrat** — Literally "Magical Federal Council," this is the name of the post-1949 version of the Wizengamot in West Germany (and after 1990, all of Germany) and the post-1955 version of the Wizengamot in Austria; **Magische Volkskongress** — Literally "Magical People's Congress," this is the name of the 1949-90 version of the Wizengamot in East Germany (which would be folded into the Magische Bundesrat after the reunification of the country); **Magico Senato** — Literally "Magical Senate," this is the version of the Wizengamot in Italy; **Mon Général** — My General; **Führerprinzip** — The "leader principle" that prescribed the fundamental basis of political authority in the governmental structures of the Third Reich, which can be most succinctly understood to mean that "_The Führer's word is above all written law_"…which made Adolf Hitler the supreme legal authority in the land, unable to be challenged by any proper process of judicial review; **Reichskanzlei** — Literally "Imperial Chancellory," this was the headquarters building of Germany's head of government in Berlin from 1871-1945.

5) The incident Hermione notes of concerning _Haida_'s plank owners was covered in _A Nice Quiet Place_.

6) The reason I made Abraham Lincoln a meson-powered quasi-immortal in this story is that in the _Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter_ novel, Henry Sturges went to his grave site in the Illinoisan capital of Springfield on the day of his funeral and turned him into a vampire. Lincoln's funeral — as also indicated in the novel — was held on 4 May 1865, which was almost a **_month_** after the president had died thanks to a wound in the back of the head courtesy of **John Wilkes Booth** (1838-65); in the novel, Booth himself had been turned into a vampire sometime before he launched his plot to avenge the downfall of the Confederacy by assassinating the Great Emancipator and his senior cabinet staff. Since it doesn't sound right to me that a _corpse_ that had been dead for almost a month could be reanimated as a **_vampire_**, making Lincoln one of Josef von Taserich's "experiments" seemed more logical; the mesonium injected into Lincoln's bloodstream — this would have been done just prior to that fateful night at Ford's Theatre — would keep his soul anchored to his body and eventually repair the damage to his skull and brain tissue.

7) As noted in the second part of the first _W&A_ story, the **Greasy Grass Settlement** — and its spiritual leader, **Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake** — are based on situations that appeared in the fanfic story _The Mandatory Marriage Contract Fic_ by **Itsme66**. Again, many thanks to that writer for the use of his interpretation of Elder Tȟatȟáŋka in my stories.

8) The **Snatchers** who appear in the flashback scene here all appeared in _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_. Only their leader, **Scabior**, was named in the novel; the given name used here is my invention. The names of the other Snatchers caught by Harry and his friends — as well as several of the Death Eaters who had gone to Chalcot Wood to deal with the ward-stone blocking off Birmingham to Voldemort's people — were taken from the actors and actresses who appeared in the movie version of _Deathly Hallows_; other names are my invention.

9) Hermione's position as "**Undesirable Number Two**" when it comes to the ministry of **Pius Thicknesse** is my invention. In _Deathly Hallows_, only Harry earned the appellation "Undesirable Number One"…though others who opposed Voldemort were also referred to as "undesirables" by the Ministry of Magic.

10) As noted before, the Meretrice quintuplets — **Libera Meretrice** and her sisters **Juno**, **Vesta**, **Bellona** and **Fauna** — all first appeared in _The Icemaidens and the Philosopher's Stone_. Atop Libera being a VERY close friend to **Sally-Anne Perks**, the quints were all blood-cousins of **Blaise Zabini**. Their home village of **Rhosan Green** — located in the north end of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire — had been blocked off thanks to house elf magic in the mid-1800s; this resulted in all the villagers at the time losing their magic…though in the universe of this story, the descendants of such people were able to interact somewhat with outsiders; this is how Voldemort would find them in the late 1970s.

11) **Vladímir Rusalovič Tayčeško** (**Lord Rjazán'**) first appeared in my fanfic _Wanderers_. **Jessica Dover** and **Martin Larsden** were both introduced in _Phoenix From the Ashes_; the former first appeared in Part 60 while the latter first appeared in Part 54.

12) **Rašīd** is the proper Arabic name for the Egyptian city in the Nile River Delta sixty-five kilometres east of Alexandra known more commonly in the English-speaking world as **Rosetta**. As is well known, this is where the famous **Rosetta Stone** was found in 1799 by the French soldier **Pierre-François Bouchard** (1772-1832). However, the Rosetta Stone dates from the **Ptolemaic Dynasty** that ruled Egypt from 305-30 B.C.E.; the **Twenty-sixth Dynasty** noted above ruled over the desert kingdom from 685-525 B.C.E.

13) The **Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross** (in German, _Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes_) were elevated levels of Germany's highest award for military valour in wartime, the **Order of the Iron Cross** (_Orden des Eisernen Kreuzes_). The various versions of the Knight's Cross which were instituted by the Nazi Party leadership in 1939 to mark exceptional acts of bravery that would be seen as going above and beyond what even the normal Iron Cross would represent. Unlike other awards for valour, the rules surrounding the awarding of the Iron Cross was structured to recognize that a winner could engage in _further_ acts of bravery that would win any other soldier an Iron Cross; this is akin to what happens to Victoria Cross winners in the British Commonwealth when they're given an additional bar worn on their medal ribbon to indicate a subsequent award. Thus, the original Iron Cross as established in 1813 for the Napoleonic Wars and later revived in 1870 (for the Franco-Prussian War) and 1914 (World War One) was awarded in one of two standard degrees, the **Iron Cross Second Class** (_Eisernes Kreuz zweite Klasse_) for the basic bravery award and the **Iron Cross First Class** (_Eisernes Kreuz erste Klasse_) for exceptional acts of bravery or additional acts of bravery for those awarded the lower class of the Iron Cross…as see the example of **Adolf Hitler** (1889-1945) himself; he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class in 1914 and was elevated to First Class in 1918.

The Knight's Cross elements of the Iron Cross introduced after the start of World War Two were ranked as follows from lowest to highest:

**Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross** (_Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes_) — First authorized 1 September 1939;  
**Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves** (_Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub_) — First authorized 3 June 1940;  
**Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords** (_Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern_) — First authorized 28 September 1941;  
**Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds** (_Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillianten_) — First authorized 28 September 1941; and  
**Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds** (_Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Goldenem Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillianten_) — First authorized 29 December 1944.

As an aside, there have been special variations of the Iron Cross awarded over the years to high-ranking generals and admirals. However, the Order of the Iron Cross was the **_first_** top-level award of valour in wartime that was granted _without_ recognition of rank or noble title…and this occurred LONG BEFORE the **Victoria Cross** was instituted in 1856 in the United Kingdom or the **Medal of Honour** was instituted in 1861 in the United States.

14) The play-off on the famous quote "**Doctor Livingstone, I presume**" as asked by **Henry Morton Stanley** (1841-1904) on his meeting the famous **David Livingstone** (1813-73) on 10 November 1871 has appeared again and again in stories of all types since that fateful encounter on the shores of Lake Tanganyika occurred. However, **_no one_** — at least to my knowledge — has EVER used Livingstone's reply to Stanley's question, which was quoted by Elizabeth Gibbon above: "**I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.**"


	3. The Vengeance of Blood

Near Allonby in Cumbria, a hidden mansion on the B5300 overlooking the Solway Firth twenty-five kilometres south of west from Carlisle, suppertime…

"So they actually use those windmills to generate electricity?"

"Yes, Mother," Raven Malfoy said with an amused chuckle as she stood beside her mother Narcissa while they gazed out into the firth. Twelve kilometres just to the south of west from Solway Lookout — the ancestral home of the Malfoys of Cumbria — was a large energy farm filled with sixty pearl-white Vestas V90-3MW three-blade wind turbine generators, all set on a sandbar located almost in the middle of the bay where the River Eden and the River Esk emptied into the Irish Sea. "The power that particular place can generate would provide energy for over a hundred thousand houses." As the older woman gaped on hearing that — even now, years after the downfall of Voldemort, most of the pureblood gentry in Britain still found accepting the sheer number of normal humans living in Great Britain these days very hard to understand and accept — Raven then winked. "Atop that — according to the press releases — the amount of coal that wouldn't have to be burned every year because that wind farm is operating would be enough to fill every room in the family house." Here, she nodded back towards the beautiful mansion house built in the Italian Renaissance style on the site where the magical overlords of the northwestern frontier of England had held court since the invasion of 1066.

Narcissa nodded. She had taken note of the construction of the Robin Rigg Wind Farm as soon as the first tower had been erected in the middle of Solway Firth the previous summer. Surprised to see windmills being erected in the middle of a _bay_ full of _**water**_, she had tried to get some explanation as to why. She hadn't got far in her research, though. Thanks very much to her husband's actions before the Battle of Hogwarts, Narcissa was viewed these days by many of her countrymen with loathing…which bothered her a lot, though she never showed her distress in public, falling back on the hard lessons she had learned while attending Hogwarts from 1966 to 1973 as a member of Slytherin. That attitude hadn't been helped at all by her son's actions since he officially assumed the role of Marquis of Cumbria on reaching his majority…and given Draco's disgust of everything "muggle" and his determination to force their society to revert to the way things were before 1997, any chance of learning more was often derailed by his enforcing his will and the family magic he controlled as the clan patriarch on her. That didn't happen often, of course; Draco, for all his many failings, was devoted to his mother and didn't force himself on her as some pureblood lords drunk with the power of family magic had done to widowed mothers — especially widowed mothers who still looked quite attractive! — in the past.

Thinking about that, the youngest daughter of Cygnus and Druella Black could only smirk at the critical blindness her son often showed when it came to things he believed was totally under his sway. For all his intelligence, Draco hadn't learned a thing from all the times he butted heads with Harry Potter since the day they first properly met on the Hogwarts Express at the start of the 1991-92 school year. His pride — boosted to unimaginable levels thanks to his father pandering to Draco's every whim and desire — blinded him again and again to the fact that the orphaned son of James Potter and Lily Evans was far more Slytherin than he normally let on despite his being sorted into Gryffindor. And while it had been amusing to watch such schoolyard spats from a distance, it was now a gross liability and a potential dire threat to the future of her family. Being one of the families that made up the Seven and Ten in the Wizengamot placed the Malfoys at the very pinnacle of wizarding society…which, along with the many _privileges_ such a position granted to all associated with it, also enforced an equal number of _**responsibilities**_ on the shoulders of the family head.

Draco only cared for the maintenance of the privileges his position gave him.

That would surely lead to a disaster.

Especially now that there were new lords and ladies in the Wizengamot — bright people such as Hermione Granger and Lisa Turpin, for example; even if Narcissa had to act indifferent to them in public, she did admire their intelligence and forward-thinking attitudes — and the leaders of wizarding Britain were finally making moves to restore the mages of Meridiana back to where they should have been all along hadn't some mugalophobic morons in 1705 excluded them from ANY say in the running of magical Britain, which effectively turned Wales into a separate magical enclave independent of any control from the Ministry of Magic in London. Narcissa certainly had no complaints there. In the wake of finally meeting a daughter she NEVER thought she would ever know in this lifetime, Raven's mother spoke to the paintings of her son's predecessors as leaders of the clan about how they felt about people who had mastered their gifts at Britain's OTHER magical school. Many of those lords and ladies told her straight out that they never had problems with Meridiana alumni even if they were willing to trust normals more than Hogwarts alumni did, especially during the Dark Times of Magic.

Of course, once the shades of those people got the chance to meet Narcissa's daughter in the wake of a tearful reunion at the Leaky Cauldron the day before Bellatrix Lestrange was banished from Britain, they all loudly chanted their approval…especially after they learned that Raven had graduated from basic magical training _egregia cum laude_ and had gained several worldwide-recognized masteries in scrying, spell creation, potions and warding after her three-year apprenticeship with Yomigawa Tsukiko ended with her being elevated to the coveted rank of Magistra Magi in 1998.

On seeing the young Terran-turned-Avalonian mage and assistant coach to the Chudley Cannons demonstrate her battle skills — which had been honed to a thought's breadth thanks to Tsukiko — with Ron Weasley's help in the mansion's duelling hall after the **Act Concerning Amendments to The Ministry Governance Act (1705), 2010** was passed on Monday, some had even gone so far to openly lament that Raven hadn't been made Lucius' successor.

While Narcissa privately hoped that Draco would finally get over his insane paranoia concerning Raven and what she represented, she was planning for such an eventuality.

After all, clan by-laws did allow it in extreme cases.

Especially if any sort of treason against the Crown was involved.

"You have to be careful about that, Mother."

Narcissa perked before she blushed on sensing Raven's pale blue eyes lock on her. Even if she had known about the Avalonians since shortly after their coming to Earth _en masse_ in February, their empathy and touch-telepathy still jarred the older woman from time to time. She then sighed as she fought down the outrage that had exploded from her heart on learning how far Draco had gone to censor news about his sister from their mother, such as threatening the staff of the _Daily Prophet_ to keep Raven's name out of the first article revealing the truth behind people like Rose Potter, Charlotte Crabbe, Ariel Goyle and Cassiopeia Lestrange back in late February after the Liberation happened. _Then again, I'm as much to blame for my own ignorance as he is_, she lamented to herself before she sighed. _I should have realized that my own daughter had also been rescued by Madame Holmes after I learned of Cassi, Ariel and Lotti._

"I won't have my family lose what we have because Draco is blindly adamant on following his father's path," she then stated. "It's a pity you didn't use the Praeda Bellica on Lucius when you finally struck him down at Hogwarts. If you did that…"

A tired sigh escaped the younger woman. "I've lived a simple life since I emerged from gestation in Manchester, Mother," she admitted as she moved to sit on the low stone fence that formed the inner boundary line of the wards that shielded their home from normal eyes; to the outside world not privy to the secrets of magic, Malfoy Manor was a decrepit ruin dating from the English Civil War, left as a slowly-disintegrating monument to a bygone era. "Alice supported me as much as she could — and as much as that damned DNA loyalty lock forced on her allowed her even if her father encouraged her to do what was necessary to give us our lives back — until I went to Meridiana. Once Sensei took me under her charge, she raised me in the traditional manner of a true samurai, one who follows the Seven Virtues without hesitation or question."

"_Gi_, _yūki_, _jin_, _rei_, _makoto_, _meiyo_, _chūgi_," Narcissa read each of them off in accented Japanese before translating, "Rectitude, courage, benevolence, respect, honesty, honour, loyalty." Her eyebrow then arched. "What of _kō_, _chi_ and _tei_?"

"Sensei never agreed to the adamant adherence of filial piety that so many in the Orient believe to be proper," Raven breathed out. "Like Harry when he was with the Dursleys…" — she tried not to smirk on sensing the disgust her mother felt on hearing about THAT family — "…and like others who have had abusive parents, Sensei didn't have the best home life until she discovered her magic. A beautiful woman in Meiji-era Japan was simply a commodity for the lord of the family to sell off to a prospective husband to cement political or economic alliances. Sensei did not care to be treated as such and — when she got the chance — expressed her disapproval to her father quite viciously." As Narcissa laughed, her daughter added, "Wisdom depends on the ability of the warrior to learn from her mistakes. And caring for the elderly — like filial piety — depends on the person in question and what that person did. Does that person really deserve such if she or he has done others ill in the past?"

The older woman nodded. She did understand where Raven came from when she had struck her father down at the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in the late spring of 1996 and once more at the Battle of Hogwarts over a year later. Lucius — who should have sensed right away what Raven really was; when Draco's sister had been still-born in the spring of 1982, he had privately grieved for years afterwards — had always valued his family more than his loyalty to Voldemort. His bribery of Ministry officials after the Dark Lord's first fall to escape Azkaban ultimately was as much to ensure his wife and son would be able to live safely and in luxury as it was for him to stay clear of the Dementors. But he had gladly used lethal spells on his reborn daughter when the Death Eaters ran headlong into the Dark Lady of the Orient and three of her students — who also included Narcissa's niece Cassiopeia Lestrange — in the Hall of Prophecies in hopes of drawing Harry Potter clear of the safety of Hogwarts to strike him down. _No doubt, that was because of how much purebloods feared and loathed the Lady Tsukiko thanks to what she did during the War of Liberation_, the Malfoy matriarch mused. Still, once he HAD learned his daughter was alive and well, Lucius should have sent a missive apologizing for his actions against her. He didn't…which guaranteed that he would face Raven again at Hogwarts a year later, falling once more at her hands.

That Draco had done NOTHING to try to repair such a ghastly rift…

Narcissa jolted on hearing a soft chime. Her daughter reached into her jeans pocket — she was dressed in modern, trendy clothes that weren't too revealing even if she could turn anyone who would be attracted to her into slobbering wrecks with just a look; _I wonder how poor Ronald deals with all the stupid boys drooling like hungry animals when he's with Raven_, she mused — to pull out a cell phone. "Malfoy," she called into it.

"We've got a problem, Raye," echoed in her ear.

"What is it, Ari?"

Hearing Raven's nickname for Ariel Goyle, Narcissa smiled…before she tensed on seeing a thunderous look cross her daughter's face. As the older woman automatically reached for her wand, Raven blinked as she listened to her friend's words before she nodded in understanding. "Right. I'll confirm it the instant my brother comes back from wherever the hell he is now, then get back to you. Thanks, Ari." She cut the connection and calmly — TOO calmly, Narcissa mused — put her phone away…before a litany of curses in Latin, Welsh, Japanese and Ariadnian exploded from her lips.

As Narcissa was fluent in the tongue of ancient Rome and passingly familiar with both the native languages of Wales and Japan — as she herself had never travelled to Nerio, her only exposure to the native tongue of the academic city-state of Ariadne was when she overheard Raven speak on her cell phone to friends she had made there; amongst them had been members of the city's famous Mage Knights like Emily Sevensheep and her lover Beatrix Monroe — she had little problem understanding what Raven was saying…even if it was unbelievably vulgar. After a couple of minutes of hearing that — Narcissa couldn't help but blush as Raven questioned the ancestry and sexual preferences of whatever fellow just earned her ire in graphic detail and literate Latin — the younger woman took a deep breath before she gave her mother an apologetic look. "Sorry about that."

"What was that all about?!" the older woman asked.

Raven gazed out to sea. "Daywalker vampires. Theo Nott is making an alliance with them to find some way to kill off every Avalonian on Earth."

Narcissa's jaw dropped in stunned disbelief on hearing that. Taking a moment to compose herself, she then weakly asked, "Is Draco involved in this?"

A curt nod answered her. "Yes."

Hearing that made the older woman wince as she felt yet another small part of her die. _Dear Merlin! Is this EVER going to end?!_ she moaned to herself…

* * *

Knockturn Alley (off Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster, London), Hundings Helpful Healers (on the site of Borgin and Burkes), an hour before nightfall…

"So how was your last transformation, Kieran?"

"Just like becoming an animagus, I assume," Kieran Harper stated with an amused smile as he gazed on Rose Potter. "Of course, I'm not blessed with that wonderful telepathy of yours, Rose, so I really can't say," the former Slytherin seeker added.

Harry's sister grinned as she dispersed the scanning pentagrams she summoned to help in her examination of the physically younger man. Watching over this process was the owner and namesake of Hundings Helpful Healers, Master Healer Lamicho Hundings. A member of Hogwarts' NEWT class of 1973 and the Viscount of Dengie in the Wizengamot, the native of Bradwell in Essex became one of St. Mungo's star specialist healers by the time the First Purification War ended. Lamicho was called back to his alma mater to consult in the aftermath of the Battle of the Astronomy Tower at the end of the 1996-97 school year. An expert on all forms of lyncathropy who studied ways of improving the Wolfsbane potion on his spare time — natural for a Ravenclaw alumnus — he was summoned by Poppy Pomfrey to help a half-dozen students who had been scarred by a rampaging Fenrir Greyback and a horde of werewolves that had accompanied the Death Eaters to Hogwarts in hopes of slaying Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter. Once he got there, he was stunned to see the Boy-Who-Lived's mysterious sister — one of nearly a hundred witches who had been given new life thanks in part to the Curse of Helga Hufflepuff and the help of an unknown benefactor in the mid-1980s, then forced to attend Meridiana in Wales to learn her magic before she was apprenticed to the Dark Lady of the Orient in the spring of 1995 — using what appeared to be pure essence of monkshood on the victims' wounds. Horrified to see Rose use such a ghastly poison, Lamicho tried to push her clear before he found himself facing Harry Potter's soulsword…just as the bleeding wounds on Kieran Harper's arms dissolved into faint pink scars. Once that was done — and confirming that the other victims were showing some recovery — Rose then gazed in amusement at the older healer. "_I use ruby meson as a base for all my potions_," she calmly explained before she admonished her big brother for drawing a _**soulsword**_ of all things on a _healer_.

Both Poppy and Lamicho felt like ten types of idiot after hearing that.

Since the Battle of Hogwarts, Lamicho had taken his family fortune and opened a private clinic for werebeasts of all types in Knockturn Alley on the site of Borgin and Burkes; the magical curio shoppe was destroyed midway through Death Eater Season along with many neighbouring businesses as a way of delivering a fatal blow on Voldemort's support base. Much to the outrage of many traditionalists of the Wizengamot, the healer gladly and frequently consulted with Meridiana alumni such as Rose Potter when it came to special cases or helping develop a final cure for lyncathropy…which was actually brought to Earth from Nerio during the Middle Ages as a perverted variation of a neurodegenerative disorder that often struck various canine therianthrope tribes on Mars' sister planet. While such actions were seen as violating the letter of the Ministry Governance Act of 1705 and other laws that forbade any commerce with Meridiana alumni, Rose countered that by stating she was working for FREE; she was wealthy in her own right due to her working as an apprentice healer at both Meridiana and in Ariadne…and her healer's oaths forbade her from rejecting potential patients for any reason. When that was countered by a bill proposed by Draco Malfoy in 2002 to forbid ANY transaction of any sort with Meridiana alumni on pain of loss of magic and family fortune, that was shot down by a HOWLER from _**Buckingham Palace**_! To the horror of ALL the members of the Wizengamot save for people like Harry Potter — he had been the one who warned the Queen about this latest lame attempt by Voldemort's allies to take back the reins of power they effectively lost five years earlier — the Crown declared that if the leaders of wizarding Britain couldn't get their acts together and start _accepting_ their countrymen who went to Meridiana as having equal rights under the magical Constitution of the Realm, the Separation Act would be done away with and the magical lords of the United Kingdom would be absorbed into the House of Lords.

One didn't need to be Rowena Ravenclaw to guess what might have happened next.

But now that such restrictions had been chased away on Monday…

"Rose?"

Rose looked over as the privacy curtain blocking off the examination suite she was using parted to reveal Charlotte Crabbe. "Hey, Lotti! What's…?" Her voice then trailed off as she felt the billowing outrage from her old classmate's heart. "What?"

Charlotte handed her cell phone over. Rose looked at the screen before she scowled, then passed the device to Lamicho. On seeing what was there, the master healer gaped in horror. "Merlin! What are those idiots planning to do?!" he demanded.

"Start a war they can't win, Uncle Lami," Charlotte answered; Lamicho had been the one who delivered her late brother Vincent at St. Mungo's in the summer of 1980…and had also tended to a distraught Helena Crabbe when she miscarried her unborn daughter shortly after Voldemort's first fall. On meeting Charlotte for the first time in 1997, Lamicho gladly adopted her as spiritual kin with Helena's private approval; he himself had yet to find the right witch to marry as his work always consumed him. "Our sisters have made too many inroads with various vampire tribes; whoever is leading this on the daywalkers' side won't get any support from people like Vlad Ṭepeṣ and Lucien Lacroix."

"Why are the daywalkers targeting your sisters, Lotti?" Kieran asked.

"They're afraid that we'll transform every Terran on the planet into Avalonians, thus making us all 'crystal-bloods,'" Charlotte stated…

…before Rose's cell phone beeped the warning that a multimedia message had just been sent to her. Taking it out of her pocket, Harry's sister brought up the new message on the view screen…and then she gaped. "Uh-oh!" she breathed out.

"What?!" the others in the room demanded.

"Rave just did a memory-scan of her brother," Rose reported as she tapped controls on her phone to bring up a holographic image. "Look at this."

An image appeared over the visual display. It was that of a raven-haired man appearing to be in his twenties, possessing dark hazel eyes. He was dressed quite conservatively even if his clothes wouldn't be seen as being too out of fashion for modern normal British society. While his skin was pale, it wasn't the ghostly white indicative of his being one of the undead. On seeing that image, Charlotte gaped in disbelief. "Oh, my God! That's Adam Sewell! What the hell's he doing still _**alive**_?!"

"You know this fellow?!" Lamicho demanded.

"He was the man many say was responsible for provoking the American Civil War in the 1860s, Uncle Lami," Rose reported. "His real name's unknown; 'Adam Sewell' was the alias he used when he was living in Mississippi before the war started."

"He probably got chased out of America by the Rail-Splitter during the Score and Four," Kieran commented as he stood up and moved to put on his shirt.

"President Lincoln killed him in 1863, just before Gettysburg," Rose reported.

Silence.

More silence.

Still more silence.

And then…

"Bloody hell!" Lamicho moaned out…

* * *

The Leaky Cauldron, fifteen minutes later…

"My, my, my…"

"How could this be possible, Mister President?"

Abraham Lincoln blinked on hearing that question before shaking his head. "I really wish I can answer that for you, Healer Hundings," the nigh-immortal vampire hunter calmly stated as he handed the cell phone back to Rose. "I critically wounded him with a punch to his stomach. My fist had my silver pocket watch wrapped around it, so I know he was badly hurt. We were crossing the Little Pipe Creek west of Union Bridge in Maryland at the time. Confederate raiders under John Mosby had set the bridge alight to prevent us from making a delivery of silver bullets needed to take down the vampires secretly fighting under Robert Lee's command." He smirked. "It was a trap to catch and destroy this man; he had been identified as the leader of his particular faction by Mollie Bean, a North Carolinian normal-born who had encountered him just after Fort Sumter and became a spy for the Department of Magic even if she disguised herself as a man and fought under Robert Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia until she was exposed as a woman after her capture in February of 1865." He then smiled in reminiscence as he recalled the tomboyish raven-haired magical federal marshal — Mollie was an alumnus of the Salem Mistresses Class of 1856, having graduated sixth in a class of fifty-four with masteries in potions and charms — who had served for two years with Company "D" of the 47th Regiment, North Carolina Infantry before her capture and exposure; it had been child's play for Lincoln's future successor, then-Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, to arrange for Mollie to disappear from Castle Thunder sometime after her incarceration. "Of course, all the charges of her being a spy, much less her being insane, were falsified," he then added before getting back to his main story. "As for the silver used to wipe out the vampires under Lee's command, the Department of Magic arranged to have it directly apparated from Washington to Gettysburg so George Meade's troops could use it."

"Didn't the wizards of the southern states go with their states?" Lamicho asked.

Lincoln shook his head. "When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution in 1787, those who were in on the secret of magic also advised the Executive Committee that wrote the magical clauses — the Magical Constitution, not to mince words — to that document. Since there were so few magicals in the thirteen states at the time, it was ultimately decided that there would only be ONE federal Department of Magic to serve as their governing body; no state-level magical departments were allowed. Because of that, almost all American magicals living in the southern states chose not to side with the Confederacy. Most took a 'wait and see' posture; they had problems with the way the Department of Magic ran their affairs, but weren't willing to launch a rebellion against Washington since the Magical Marshals — our version of your Corps of Law Aurors; Mollie Bean was one — swore a binding magical oath to both the normal and magical side of the Constitution in all its aspects. They spent a lot of their time between '61 and '65 cleaning up the evidence of vampiric battles. By the time Gettysburg happened in the summer of '63, many of them were also helping slaves flee those who wanted to use them for food."

The others nodded. "So how could he have survived being gut-punched with a silver-coated fist, then falling into the burning wreckage of a bridge?" Harry asked.

"He was said to be five millennia old at the time of the Civil War, Big Brother," Rose noted. "He could have picked up some magic along the way."

"The _nŏksbae_, maybe?" Charlotte asked.

People gazed at the newly-ennobled Viscountess of Saxmundham. The word "_nŏksbae_" was applied to an ancient Korean ritual that had been used by magicals of all stripes in the Land of the Morning Calm since the days of Tan'gun-wanggŏm over four centuries before. What happened when one moved to create a _nŏksbae_ was that a dying magical would shear off a portion of his/her soul containing all his/her memories, then gift the fragment to a worthy heir; this would ensure that the knowledge of all aspects of one's clan magic would be passed on from generation to generation. However, unlike the rituals needed to create a horcrux, the _nŏksbae_ was _**never**_ meant to keep the dying magical alive; to do something like THAT was seen as a gross affront to the Lord of Heaven and would bring His Disfavour upon the idiot stupid enough to do such a thing. Eventually, trade with Nerio allowed the _nŏkspotchep'um_ concept to be developed during the early years of the Three Kingdoms period. Harry himself learned of both the _nŏksbae_ and _nŏkspotchep'um_ processes thanks to his Korean-Briton housemate Mun Aesup, a woman descent of a family that had served the various rulers of Korea from the days of Tan'gun's court in the long-lost city of Asadal near modern-day P'yŏng'yang.

Rose and Charlotte, of course, learned of that concept via Yomigawa Tsukiko.

"Or maybe a horcrux," the Man-Who-Won mused. "If Adam's both a vampire and magical, he would have the power and the skill to create such a thing."

Lincoln nodded; he knew through friends about what Tom Riddle had done to render himself effectively immortal. "And the blood-lust, of course," he added.

The others grimaced on hearing that. "What can we do, sir?" Kieran Harper asked. The young werewolf — who, along with others who had been nearly killed by Greyback and his friends in 1997, volunteered to trial run anything people like Lamicho Hundings and his co-workers developed in hopes of finding a final cure to lyncathropy — had come to this meeting in a show of support to the woman who had made his life much more bearable over the last twelve years. While he wouldn't openly court Rose for many reasons — the least of which being that she was not soul-bonded by Avalonian traditions; even if she was effectively a "Terran-turned-Avalonian," Rose was bound by whatever genetic imperatives her DNA forced on her, the drive to seek out one's _marei'cha_ being one of them — he did see her as a friend; the idea of ANYONE threatening Rose Potter would have every lyncathrope in Great Britain seizing what weapon they could to seek out and kill the monsters contemplating such a ghastly thing. "If Malfoy and his friends support this, that's treason against the Crown! Are they trying to lose their magic?!"

"That's probably why Nott made a deal with Sewell, Kieran," Harry noted. "Vampires don't acknowledge any sort of normal or magical authority over them even if it falls on the various national magical ministries to keep them under some decent control. All Nott and his friends have to do is indicate where potential targets could be located, then step back and let the vampires go to town. It's no wonder they went after the Schwarze Mädchen. If they were trapped in that cave for all these years…"

"A big smörgåsbord of magical power, all for the taking," Rose muttered.

The others nodded before a contemplative trill escaped Lincoln's lips. "Maybe…"

"What?" Harry asked.

"Mister Potter, are there still laws on the books here in Britain that allow virgin witches to seek out vengeance against those who would try to use their blood or magic in rituals that could either make them squibs or kill them?" the former lawyer asked, his hazel eyes twinkling in amusement. "Given that those poor ladies were just REBORN as Avalonians, it stands to rights that they are all still quite 'pure.'"

Harry gaped at him before a smirk crossed his face. "Right…!"

"I don't get it," Kieran said.

"Lad, it's simple," Lamicho stated. "In first year at Hogwarts — usually during the first broom-riding lesson — witches have their hymen painlessly shattered to ensure that their virginal blood would never be used in any dark ritual. That also happens at Meridiana as well, also during the first year of studies." He indicated Rose with a wave of his hand. "That's been standard procedure since well before the Separation Act was passed. You don't WANT to know what sort of power a dark wizard could muster up from a virgin's blood." He sighed. "Is that law still there, Harry?"

"Yes," Harry stated. "We contemplated removing it from the Rolls of Magical Law back in 1999…but then remembered that a lot of would-be witches that couldn't afford to attend Hogwarts stay virgins until their first time having sex with someone. After Minerva found ways to expand enrolment thanks to increased funds from sponsorships, I'd say that at least ninety-eight percent of potential female students who wouldn't have been able to come to Hogwarts before 1997 are now able to get scholarships to go to the school." As the others nodded, he smirked, crossing his arms. "Well, if Theo and his friends think they can get away with this, they're sorely mistaken. All we need to do is find a way to give Brigadier Gibbon and her friends the excuse they need to go after them. Just have them declare the Vindictam Sanguinis and Magic itself will support their actions."

"Persuade them to not kill them, Harry," Charlotte stated. "Make them use Gonebren."

Lamicho and Kieran paled on hearing _**that**_ name. While dealing with such a ghastly thing as treason against the Crown was one thing, the very THREAT of the Maze Amongst the Rocks — even if it was not directed on them — was enough to make even the most liberal traditionalist soil themselves. "Then I'll need to speak to the Queen to get the keys," Harry breathed out.

"May I offer my services?"

People looked on Lincoln, who had an amused smile on his face. Harry blinked before he nodded, grinning in turn. With that, the vampire hunter pulled out a cell phone to dial a series of numbers. A moment later, a voice called out from the speakers, "Yes? Who is this?"

"Good evening, Elizabeth," the former president said. "Did I interrupt something?"

A surprised gasp answered him. "Abraham Lincoln!" the woman on the other side of the line cried out with delight. She then pause before saying, "Wait! Your signal's coming in as clear as daylight! Where on Earth are you calling from?!"

"I'm in London right now, staying at the Leaky Cauldron."

Silence.

More silence.

Still more silence.

Then…

"I assume Harry Potter is with you?"

Lincoln smiled. "With his delightful sister and Ms. Crabbe, plus friends."

"Come here at once," the Queen ordered…

* * *

Aboard the _Freedom_ alongside the Avalon bioroid factory, an hour later…

"Tea service!"

Luna Lovegood gasped on hearing that cheerful voice before she smiled as a pretty woman appearing to be about twenty or so, possessing long, straight dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, came into the room. In her hand was a small tray with a tea kettle and a couple of cups, plus all the trimmings. "Thank you, First Sergeant Mitchell."

Regina Mitchell smiled. "You know how to read normal rank insignia?" the only American member of the Black Maidens asked as she placed the tray down on a table located in the middle of the observation bubble the magical naturalist from Devon had come to so she could gaze on the incredible scenery around her. Regina was currently dressed in a surplus pair of battle dress without any sort of insignia save her family name on a tape over the right breast pocket, **U.S. ARMY** on a tape over her left breast pocket and metal pin rank insignia on the flaps of her collars displaying the three chevrons over three rockers surrounding a hollow diamond insignia of a first sergeant.

"Well, given how much you all must have felt betrayed when you were freed of the _Führerprinzip_ oath, I don't think it's right to address you as '_Hauptscharführerin der Schwarze Mädchen und Hauptwachthexe der Magische Reichsarmee_.'"

The older woman giggled before she poured some tea. "You must think I'm crazy," she admitted as Luna took up her cup. "Bright young American witch coming over to Europe to fight in a magical war supporting the _**Nazis**_ of all people! I'm not one of the Volksdeutsche that flocked back to the Fatherland to support the Führer and his cause in their time of need. My ancestors came with the first migrants to Plymouth on the _Mayflower_, fought to free our land from Britain in the Revolutionary War and fought for the Union in the Civil War." She sipped her tea. "I had friends across the 'pond' who persuaded me that Master Gellert was doing the right thing. All the mugalophobia that was rampant across Europe at the time just sickened me. Just because my father was a lawyer and my mother was a socialite doesn't mean my magic was different than someone who could trace their magical ancestors all the way back to the time of Merlin."

"True," Luna mused with a nod of understanding before sipping her tea. "I've done a lot of extensive studies on all of you girls, especially all the non-Germans and non-Austrians who flocked to Master Gellert's side. You always were at your best when it came to fighting the Soviets, weren't you? I assume it's because of the various 'red scares' that ran rampant across America after the October Revolution."

Her host nodded. "Yes. Supporting one's fellow citizen is one thing; it's a simple act of Christian charity in the long term. But the forced collectivization of whole societies out of some master economic plan — to say anything of denouncing religion as the 'opiate of the masses' — is something different. I've never liked communists and I never will. I couldn't understand why was it so many Americans flocked across to fight as part of the International Brigades to support President Azaña in Spain when the Caudillo moved to overthrow the Second Republic." Before she became one of the Black Maidens, Regina Mitchell had been part of a group of magicals assigned by Gellert Grindelwald to protect the fighters of the Condor Legion against Spanish wizards and witches who supported the preservation of the Republic, much less whatever foreign mercenaries were fighting at their side. "Given how much Joe Stalin was manipulating things behind the scenes from his offices in Moscow, it was pretty obvious to me." She then wryly smirked. "Then again, Adolf Hitler wasn't so much better…though we never found out the real truth of it until after the bastard shot himself dead."

"How did it feel?"

Regina blink. "The oath?"

"Yes."

A tired sigh answered her. "When I took it, I believed I was doing the right thing. You've met Master Gellert, haven't you?" At Luna's nod, Regina shrugged. "He needed the support of the Party to press his own goals, so he had no choice but to play along with what Himmler suggested. He hoped that when it was all over, the oath would be relaxed and we could carry on with our lives. So we did it. When we took the oath, we swore our magic to the service of the Führer and the cause of National Socialism. Fortunately for us, Hitler didn't care to send us to America to fight Raeburn and her friends, not like he did the Übermenschen." As Luna nodded, the Massachusite witch added, "But when the oath bond was lifted away from us, the _memories_…!"

Tears filled her eyes…and then she gasped as Luna came over to embrace her. Chuckling in pained thanks at the show of support from the English pureblood witch — who, if this was anytime during Grindelwald's War, Regina might have killed without a second's hesitation if Luna had the ill-luck to get in her way — the American turned to give the other woman a tender kiss on the lips before allowing Luna to pull back. "You went through it, didn't you?" she asked before sipping her tea. "Tsukiko-sensei let you touch the Tsūshō, didn't she? When she was training your friend?"

"She did," Luna admitted before sipping her own tea. "Tsukiko-sensei was given carte blanche clearance by the ICMC to do everything she could to prepare Harry and all those who were ready to support him to deal with what Prophecy dumped on his head when he was a newborn baby. Professor Dumbledore had been humiliated by Sensei at the Department of Mysteries; she used a soulsword to shatter the loyalty lock the Elder Wand always forged with the person who had won it in battle, so he wasn't as powerful as he might have seemed before that fight…not to mention what his later encounter with the Resurrection Stone and the horcrux within it did to him. He wasn't given his positions as Chief Warlock or Supreme Mugwump back after Cornelius Fudge and Delores Umbridge did their best to publicly discredit him, so he couldn't do a thing to stop Sensei. Once he was out of the way, Sensei brought in Nekane and we took off from there."

Regina grimaced. "I read about what that Umbridge bitch did. Nasty piece of work."

"Yes, she was…but the Hollows dealt with her quite thoroughly."

The Massachusite nodded. H.M.P. Gonebren had been opened at the command of King George VI after the start of hostilities in 1939 to serve as a prisoner of war camp for members of the Magische Reichsarmee captured in the field. While none of the Schwarze Mädchen had the ill-luck to be sent to the Maze Amongst the Rocks, many of their brothers-in-arms weren't so lucky…and would emerge from that hellhole as pale shadows of their former selves, consigned to long-term care at Germany's equivalent to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, Magische Krankenhaus Kentigernus in modern-day Göttingen. Then again, even if the Hollows were born from the vengeful spirits of normals slain over the years by evil wizards and witches, they had all been British when they were living corporeal beings. Patriotism and loyalty to the Crown was one of the things that marked the Hollows as a whole; the creator of Gonebren was obviously someone who view that type of loyalty as right and proper.

"So how did it feel to you?" Regina then asked.

"I wasn't as affected by it as others were the day it was brought to Hogwarts…"

* * *

_Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (on the north shore of Loch Eigheach west of Kinloch Rannoch in the Council Area of Perth and Kinross, Scotland), Wednesday 4 September 1996, after supper… _

_"So how does it feel to have your sister back, mate?" _

_Neville Longbottom seemed to glow like the morning sun as he and other members of the Defence Association made their way down a familiar seventh floor corridor in the academic wing of the ancient castle above the main library. "It's like a little slice of Heaven, Ron!" the future Marquess of Holdenhurst stated as he, Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger led a troupe of fifty students to the place where the painting of Barnabas the Barmy teaching mountain trolls how to perform ballet hung opposite the hidden doorway to the Room of Requirements. "When Harry invited me to come down to Grimmauld Place to meet Grace, it…" He shook his head. "Well…" _

_Ginny Weasley and Lavender Brown reached over to squeeze his shoulders in a show of support. "How did your grandmother react to it?" Hermione asked as people stopped, all noting that there was a visible door in the wall where the Room's entrance was. _

_Ron went over to try the door before he noted it was locked. "Harry?!" he called out after knocking on the door several times. "You in there?!" _

_"Just a sec', Ron!" came back from inside the Room. _

_As the others relaxed, they turned their attention back to Neville and what he was saying. "Gran was just beside herself, 'Mione," he stated before he sighed. "She's a little sad, too. Grace can't say a thing about who it was that gave her life back; neither can Rose, Raven nor Cassi, much less Lotte, Ariel and all the others. Uncle Algernon tried to find some way to get that secret out of her, but couldn't do it. It's no magical oath; it's something WORSE than that!" As people gaped in shock at him, Neville shook his head. "I can't imagine what it is, though." _

_"How many was it altogether?" Zhāng Qiū — known to her friends by the more common English reading of her name, "Cho Chang" — asked. _

_"Ninety-seven," Luna Lovegood reported; she had interviewed Rose Potter, Raven Malfoy and Cassiopeia Lestrange for the_ Quibbler _in mid-July. "You-Know-Who and his people wiped out all the unborn children of Rhosan Green back in 1979 because none of their parents would bow to him. All — including magical quintuplets born of the Meretrices of Wye — were brought back to life by whomever saved Grace, Rose and the others." She sighed. "Such a pity that the Roll Book here didn't pick up on any of them. They simply had no choice but to go to Meridiana to learn their magic." _

_"Why do people have problems with Meridiana?" Colin Creevey asked. "I've read about the Thousand Master and Ala Rubra. They saved everyone on Nerio from the Mage of the Beginning. They'd be Gryffindors if they came here! What's wrong with them?!" _

_Many of the others nodded. "It's all because of power and influence in the Wizengamot, Colin," Susan Bones answered. Now ennobled as the Baroness of Bute thanks to the death of her aunt Amelia weeks before, she still had a haunted look on her face because of what happened to her last surviving relative at the hands of the Death Eaters. Atop that, she — like many of her brother and sister Hufflepuffs — was still outraged over what happened to their housemate Sally-Anne Perks just before the Easter holidays when it was revealed that she had formed a_ **soul-bonding** _with the eldest of the Meretrice quintuplets, Libera, who had graduated with distinction from Meridiana a year ago and was now working for the Special Operations Division of the British Library. "Meridiana alumni have never been shy about dealing with muggles, though I once heard that they only select people with some sort of magical potential to form pactio bonds with. A squib can work just as much as a fully-trained witch, wizard or other magical." _

_"Stupid!" Colin's kid brother Dennis spat out with a shake of his head. _

_"Indeed, Young Master Dennis, it is grossly foolish. But we endure." _

_People gasped as they snap-drew their wands and scanned around… _

_…just as an invisibility screen was dropped to reveal a smiling woman possessing the dusky skin indicative of African or Mediterranean ancestry, though she had rusty red hair tied in a long braid to her hips and stormy grey eyes. She was dressed in very fashionable civilian clothes. There was no sign of a wand anywhere on her person. "Oh, hello, Libera," Luna said with a smile as she slipped her wand away. _

_Hearing that name, the Hufflepuffs all grinned as they relaxed, nodding to the wife of their former housemate. "Greetings and felicitations, Lady Luna," Libera said, a noblewoman's prim tones echoing in her voice. "And by the way, my friends, you all showed excellent reflexes. I'm sure you'll learn many things now that the International Conference is taking direct interest in the affairs of this poor land." _

_"How did you get here, Lady Libera?" Alice Tolipan — one of the two Slytherins who had joined the D.A.; her family, despite their being "pure" by British standards, utterly didn't care at all for racist monsters like Delores Umbridge — wondered. _

_"A special compensation issued by the International Conference for the duration of the current emergency, Mistress Alice. It grants us unfettered access to the castle," Libera stated as she knocked on the door to the room. "Is all ready, Lord Harold?!" _

_"It's open!" _

_Libera opened the door and waved the others inside. They all walked in…and then stopped on seeing the small crowd of Slytherins standing close to the head of the room to both sides of Harry Potter. Amongst them were several of Harry's own year-mates: Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass, Tracey Davis, Millicent Bulstrode and Blaise Zabini. "What are you guys doing here?!" Luca Caruso — he was the only other Slytherin of the original D.A. — immediately demanded. "Harry, did you…?" _

_"I did," Harry stated before he gazed on Ron. "And no objections from you, alright?!" he sternly declared, which made the youngest Weasley son wince on sensing the cold tone in his best friend's voice. "Now's not the time for that garbage! These people here have all proved to me their willingness not only to join the Association, but not to betray us to Voldemort and his friends." Ignoring the mass chorus of winces from the other students on hearing the Dark Lord's battle name, Harry pointed to the onyx black crystal about the size of a rugby football on a frame brazier in front of him. "Last year, we were a bunch of amateurs driven by a righteous cause. This year, we won't fool around. You all read what happened in the Department of Mysteries. You all read what the ICMC decided to do because of Voldemort." Again, he ignored the winces. "We've got a very simple choice before us this year. We either make it very clear to the ICMC that we can guide our society into a better future…or we better get ready to face the modern version of the Magische Reichsarmee." As the newcomers all croaked in shock on hearing that dire statement, Harry crossed his hands behind his back. "And as Libera there can tell you because she got it straight from the Queen herself, if we lose ICMC recognition, you can kiss the Separation Act good-bye!" _

_"Merlin! That's can't be true!" Lavender gasped. _

_"It IS true, Lavender-chan," a woman coldly stated from nearby. _

_Neville, Ron and Ginny gargled on hearing that familiar voice as another invisibility screen was dropped, revealing seven people dressed in the white-and-red kimono-and-hakama uniform of Shintō shrine maidens. "Good evening, minna-dono," Yomigawa Tsukiko stated as she walked over to stand close to her new student, stopping to gaze on each of the D.A. As she did that, her apprentices moved to stand off to either side of the Slytherins…save for Rose Potter, who — much to the private delight of all the other D.A. members — embraced her brother from behind. "Amazing as this sounds to me even now, Harry-kun has convinced me you all have a modicum of talent when it comes to magical combat. Since Severus-dono is going to do everything he can to sabotage your studies in his class this year — yes, even to those such as Pansy-chan and her friends who have joined you today — in hopes of giving Voldemort-dono's people a chance against you all, it is up to my friends and I to help you gain such competency in magical combat that you will be have a chance of surviving a duel with Alastor Moody." _

_Jaws dropped in stunned shock. "We can't be THAT good!" Parvati Patil exclaimed. _

_"Parvati-chan, don't undersell yourself," Tsukiko calmly stated. "I couldn't help but overhear Colin-kun speak of Nagi Springfield in the corridor outside. Does anyone know why he was given the nickname 'Thousand Master?'" On seeing a chorus of confused looks respond to that question, the Dark Lady of the Orient smiled. "Tell them, Grace-chan." _

_"Hai, Sensei," Grace Longbottom said with a grin. Possessing the same dirty blonde hair and hazel eyes Neville had, she was lean and muscled. The sharper-eyed of the D.A. were quick to note that Neville's sister carried herself with a very confidant demeanour that told anyone that she could thrash a dozen opponents without breaking a sweat. "Some say that Nagi Springfield is the master of a thousand separate spells, hexes and jinxes. That's a lie; he actually dropped out of Meridiana before he would have graduated and been granted the rank of Discipulus Magi…though as to what he might have picked up when he was out seeking his fortune, that's never been confirmed." As people gaped at her, she smirked. "Some claim that Nagi made pactio bonds with a thousand people to boost his magic. I can't confirm that one way or another, but it is the common practice of people like myself to keep the pactios to a very dull roar." As people laughed on hearing that, Grace shrugged. "What I CAN confirm about the man is this: He is a master at magical combat, a shrewd tactician and strategist, one hell of a great swordsman and he's taught himself to think on his feet. That's what we all intend to help each and every one of YOU become before we're finished with you." She pointed to her brother, then Hermione, then Ginny, then Luna and a few others. _

_"You think the Death Eaters like my father are scary?" Raven Malfoy added. "They're only scary if you LET them be scary! The average combat skill of someone who fights for Tom Riddle — from what Rose, Cassi and I saw in the Department of Mysteries — is, for the most part, utterly_ **pitiful**_!" As people gaped in disbelief at her, the platinum blonde with the light blue eyes smirked. "What they have going for them is the ability to kill and maim without wanting to stop. That's it!" She made a wave of her hand towards the brazier holding the dark crystal in front of Harry, causing it to levitate. As people goggled, Draco's sister smirked. "Did you know that save for Riddle himself, NONE of the Death Eaters had any skills in what you call 'wandless magic?'" _

_"We'll be getting an expert in wandless casting here soon," Harry reported as Raven placed the brazier on the floor. "She's actually Nagi Springfield's niece Nekane; she was a classmate of Rose's at Meridiana and is currently apprenticing to become a basic magical teacher at the school. By the time we leave school in June, we are ALL going to be able to cast wandlessly and without spoken words. Sensei's already started with me. It's not as hard as you might think it is; it's actually learning how to master the same type of accidental magic you all experienced before your first year here." As people gaped, he smirked. "Riddle's idiots won't be expecting anything like that." _

_"Much less using the so-called 'unforgivables' on the Dark Marks those idiots wear," Cassiopeia added. "You probably heard how I killed my uncle Rabastan back in June. I'll admit that I used the_ Morsmordre Avada Kedavra _on him." As people gasped in shock on hearing that, Bellatrix's daughter grinned. "But he tried to kill me first even after he and his brother both clued into who I was, so I had the excuse to take him down. And I targeted his Dark Mark even if the curse ultimately killed him; it's not my fault that he allowed that idiot Riddle to bind his very LIFE to that mark!" She then sighed as the others in the room all grimly nodded in understanding. "Even if he was an evil little shit, he was still my uncle. I couldn't muster the hate or anger necessary to strike him down directly…but I_ **could** _turn my hate and anger on his Dark Mark. I despise what that damned mark ultimately means…and with that, I can destroy it and whatever idiot stupid enough to get himself or herself branded with it. After all, it's only a_ **magical construct**_! Do your laws protect something like_ **that** _from the Killing Curse, to say anything of the Cruciatus Curse or the Imperius Curse?!" _

_"Of course not!" Terry Boot snapped. _

_"Good," Tsukiko declared. "Minna-dono, I will be very honest with you all. If I had my army from the War of Liberation at my side right now, I could conquer Britain in less than a WEEK! Why?! Because — no thanks to your esteemed headmaster! — you've been allowed to believe that whatever happens beyond the walls of this castle is no different than what you've dealt with inside this castle! That's been happening for YEARS now! You can't allow yourselves to be ruled by the same type of combat ethics your parents' generation tried to use against Voldemort-dono the first time around. That's what got six thousand innocent people killed before Harry-kun's mother struck the fool down in 1981. Neville-kun and Harry-kun both can explain to you all in graphic detail where that primrose path ultimately leads to! If you tried the same stupid idiocy THIS time around, you've lost before the first spell is cast." She then smirked. "However, I do realize that you've had to endure very sloppy instruction in your magical defence and other classes over the years, so it's time for some shock therapy to get you all into the proper mood." She then gazed on the brazier in front of Harry before nodding. "Show them, Harry-kun." _

_"Hai, Sensei." _

_And with that, he reached over to place his hand on the onyx surface of the crystal held in the brazier. As people watched, his skin turned nearly white as a croak of mind-numbing horror escaped him, his eyes tearing as pure AGONY crossed his face. Before Hermione or Ron — much less Pansy or Daphne — could move to pull him away from that thing, Rose's hands shot out as she effortlessly formed a bubble of energy around her brother to ensure they couldn't touch him. As people watched wide-eyed, Harry — after what seemed like a mind-numbing eternity; it was actually only ten seconds — then gasped as he pulled his hand away, his eyes wide with grief and horror as he gazed on the dark crystal before him. After a moment, he dropped to one knee and bowed his head to the crystal. "Never again!" he solemnly whispered. "Never again…!" _

_"The Tsūshō…!" _

_Eyes locked on Luna, who was staring in wide-eyed fear at the crystal that had hurt Harry so. "What is that, Luna?" Neville demanded as Rose moved to comfort her brother. _

_"Before she launched the War of Liberation in 1939, Tsukiko-sensei went on fact-finding missions across Asia and Africa to see for herself — and EXPERIENCE for herself — what the magicals of the various European colonies lived like," the daughter of the owner of the_ Quibbler _reported. "As she went, she couldn't ignore the simple fact that too many innocent people were SUFFERING because of those magical loyalty locks the ministries in London, Paris, Brussels and the Hague — and yes, Rome, Madrid and Lisbon, too — forced on people who never wished our ancestors ill-will and only wanted to live their lives in peace and happiness, to say anything of practicing their own type of magic without any unreasonable restrictions from the old ICW. Over time, Sensei began collecting memory copies of magicals subjected to that in the Tsūshō." She indicated the black crystal that had so easily dropped the "Chosen One" to his knees. "Before she launched her first attack into Indochina, she made EVERY warrior who fought with her army touch the Tsūshō…so they would understand deep in their hearts the REAL reasons they were fighting." _

_People gaped as they stared wide-eyed at the Tsūshō…just as Harry got back to his feet. Taking a deep breath, he wiped his face clean before he gazed on the other D.A. members. "You want to be in the Defence Association this year?" he hoarsely declared, his green eyes flashing with iron determination. "You want to stop being one of the wizarding sheep that Voldemort and his friends want you to be? You want to learn how to survive and make sure your families survive?" He pointed at the crystal that served as a physical reminder of a horrible time in the histories of millions across Asia and Africa. "Touch that first! If you can't bring yourself to do that, don't bother wasting my time or Sensei's time." _

_The other members of the D.A. save Luna gaped in stunned disbelief at him…_

* * *

"…there were a lot of people who were quite reticent on touching the Tsūshō…but they wanted to live even more, so they did it," Luna finished. "Zhāng Qiū had, by then, got over the loss of Cedric Diggory and — before the start of her last year at Hogwarts — met up with Kathleen Johnson, one of the Avalonian-Britons who had been created as auxiliary observers for their Niphentaxian masters; she was based out of Glasgow. They didn't bond until after the DNA loyalty lock on pure-born Avalonians was broken back in February by the Earth Angel." She nodded as Regina scowled on being reminded yet again about what her newly-adopted countrywomen had endured. "Of course, Kathy knew about Qiū's magic…though since Qiū believed Kathy was just a normal Terran, she was obliged under the Statute to stay quiet about her powers. These days, both run a branch of the Technomancy Shoppe in Bonham Alley, Glasgow's magical shopping district."

Regina nodded. "You care for her, don't you?"

"I do," Luna admitted with a smile, realizing that the Massachusite witch's newly-gifted empathy was picking up her feelings for her former housemate. "Qiū was always called by a really warped version of her name by most of the people at Hogwarts, 'Cho Chang.' There was no respect to her being ethnically Chinese. No decent attempts at trying to say her name properly…to say anything of using proper Oriental naming order! This was the very same thing Lì Sǔ, Mun Aesup and her siblings endured when they went to Hogwarts. It was just disgusting!" She breathed out. "When I showed her how much I was willing to respect her and where she came from, she became an adopted older sister to me, protecting me from those of my housemates who didn't care for the way I look on the world and did horrid things to me like stealing my personal belongings and hiding them from me. In turn, I comforted her and helped her recover from losing Cedric like she did." A wicked look then crossed her face. "Of course, when I went back for my OWL year after Tom Riddle's return to corporal form was exposed to the general public, Tsukiko-sensei was willing to put some nasty hexes and jinxes on my belongings, which left quite an impression on my tormentors."

The older woman shook her head. "You'll find bullies anywhere you go, Luna," she noted…before she tensed. "What on Earth…?!" she hissed out…

…as the familiar chiming noise of a materialiser echoed from nearby. Both turned as two columns of light produced two very familiar people to Luna. "Qiū! Kathy!" the daughter of the owner of the _Quibbler_ yelped in delight as she rose up.

"Damn! Why'd you insist on us coming here THIS way, Kathy?!" Zhāng Qiū growled as she glared in annoyance at the dark-eyed twenty-something with the wavy auburn hair who had accompanyed her here.

Regina was quick to sense that the protest from the Chinese-Scot was mollified by the love she felt for the Avalonian-Scot beside her. She was also quick to sense that Qiū herself was a Terran-turned-Avalonian; no doubt, that had been done right after the Liberation. "Because we don't have Star Flares available for civilian transport and time's of the essence, Xiánqī," Kathy Johnson said with a teasing smile as she gently grasped her bond-mate's hand, that making Qiū turn a fine shade of crimson.

The former Ravenclaw seeker and now technomancy mistress smiled as she raised her lover's hand up so she could courtly kiss it. She then turned to warmly embrace Luna. "How are you, Yuèzǐ?" she tenderly asked as she ruffled the younger woman's hair.

"Happy that good people have been brought back, Qiūgōng," Luna said as she kissed Qiū on the cheek before she moved to introduce her old housemate and her lover to Regina.

Hugs and kisses were exchanged before Luna excused herself to get more tea cups and supplies. "So how are you adjusting, sister?" Kathy asked as she gazed with concern at the Massachusite. "This must be horrendously disorientating for you."

"Not as much as it might be for some of my own sisters," Regina admitted. "Much that the sheer scale of the technological gap between what I'm used to from the 1930s and 1940s and what you people have is quite overwhelming, I'm a big fan of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon." Noting the confused look crossing Qiū's face, the older woman added, "They're science fiction heroes that appeared in pulp magazines and newspaper comic strips in the 1920s and 1930s, Madame Zhāng. They speculated on things like travelling to other planets and encountering alien civilizations long before rocket technology was developed by people such as Professor Robert Goddard and _Freiherr_ Wernher von Braun."

"I know how you feel," Qiū admitted. "My family is quite modern as wizarding families in Britain come, yet some of the things our normal neighbours dealt with before I went to Salem to learn technomancy were totally beyond my understanding. Of course, being bonded to Kathy here helps a lot with all the things her sisters brought here in February." She scowled. "Though I still hate those bloody materialisers! They're just a damned accident waiting to happen! Mark my words on that!"

"Dearest, you can have accidents with the floo, apparition and portkeys," Kathy chided, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "Stop trying to focus Doctor McCoy too much."

Qiū stuck her tongue out…then moaned as her lover leaned over to devour it with her lips. By then, Luna came back with another tray full of cups and tea bags. Coming with her were two of Qiū's and Luna's sister Ravenclaws. "Hey, Qiū!" Lì Sǔ called out, grinning as the older woman's cheeks reddened to the shade of ripe cherries at being caught in such an act of intimacy with her soul-mate. "So your bond-mate forced you to risk having your molecules scattered all over the galaxy, eh?!"

"That's not funny, Sǔ!" Qiū snapped back…before she blinked on sensing bubbling amusement inside the hearts of her friends. "Oh, Merlin! What's going on?!"

"Hermione has discovered in Elizabeth Gibbon a sister hyper-intellect, Qiū," Luna said as she prepared tea. "After all the basic pleasantries were done away with, both began to debate everything under the sun." She giggled. "Did you know that the brigadier also used a time turner to sneak in some extra classes at Hogwarts when she was there?"

"Merlin! No way!" Qiū gasped.

"Elizabeth is a sister eagle, Qiū," Lisa stated before nodding her thanks as Luna handed her a cup of tea. "Right now, 'Mione's being bombarded with all the incredible applications the Schwarze Mädchen developed during the war for _**all five**_ exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration to help them survive in the battlefield. Sǔ, Daph and I were BARELY able to keep up with HALF of what Elizabeth was saying!" She shook her head. "It was a bloody crime when the Americans and the Soviets demanded that the Magische Reichsarmee and the Schwarze Mädchen unconditionally surrender after Hitler killed himself. All the knowledge and experience they have…"

"How do we get around the people who want their hides for what they did during the war, Lisa?" Sǔ asked. "There are still a lot of old folks who are carrying a huge grudge."

Her old year-mate nodded in understanding. "Well, if push comes to shove, they can all migrate to the States or Canada," Regina mused. "I know that I was formally exonerated for what I did by President Truman in 1950 when Tsukiko-sensei went to bat for me and explained why the ICMC passed that resolution wiping the slate clean for all of us."

The others nodded. "Germany, Austria and Italy are also places people like you can go to," Lisa mused. "You were all fully exonerated there. The Bundesmagieministerium in Berlin still has all your personal effects in storage, including your wands."

"But would they need them now?" Luna asked. "They didn't have the Neuwied Test back then, but it's clearly obvious to me that their magical levels have increased quite a lot. Look what happened to Qiū and you when you underwent your body-swaps."

Qiū and Lisa nodded. "What's the Neuwied Test?" a curious Regina asked.

"It's a way to determine total magical power and potential skill level," Sǔ explained. "It was developed in the early 1980s by a German unspeakable named Johannes Neuwied. Average score for wizards and witches is between 110-180 points."

The American hummed before she nodded. "We came up with something similar back in '41," she then reported before closing her eyes and concentrating.

Qiū, Kathy and Lisa were quick to sense their host sending out a mental command. A moment later, a slender yet muscular woman about the same age came into the room. Dressed in German combat fatigues with the framed diamond over two chevrons insignia of a _Stabsfeldwebel_ on her shoulders, she was a tomboyish woman with pale blue-grey eyes and stylishly-cut auburn hair. "Is there something the matter, _Meine Kaiserin_?" she teased with an amused twinkle in her eyes…though all the Britons in the room were quick to see that the newcomer was clearly in love with Regina Mitchell.

"Chris!" Regina snarled. "What did I tell you about calling me that?!"

"To keep doing it?" the newcomer teased.

An annoyed scream escaped the American as Luna clapped her hands in delight. "Oh, my! I'm so glad the Vinur Drekar found you girls!" she declared, making both Regina and her opposite number in the First Battalion, Christine Schultze, stare wide-eyed at her. "I know you'll just stir up all sorts of wonderful trouble for we mere poor mortals!"

"You actually LIKE us?!" Christine exclaimed. "After what we did?!"

"You all fought to make a place for normal-borns all across Europe, Sergeant-major Schultze," Lisa stated. "I'm a half-blood. So's Sǔ here, not to mention Hannah and Susan. Qiū's a pureblood, but she's been raised to respect normal culture. Atop that, she bonded to Kathy here, who's ultimately an _**alien**_ of all things! Daph's a pureblood, but she's pretty open to new things; you can't be an Unspeakable while being close-minded. Luna's ALWAYS respected all cultures regardless if they're magical or non-magical, much less human or non-human. 'Mione's a normal-born. The man who got rid of our last Dark Lord was a half-blood and normal-raised." She sighed. "You guys might not realize it, but you blazed a huge path for a lot of people in Europe even if the traditionalists you wanted to destroy tried to turn back all the changes that came in your wake every chance they could! We admire you guys. Luna's right; it's a wonderful thing you all are alive and well."

"I know Master Gellert will die a happy man now," Luna added as her eyes teared. "You were the most precious thing to him even when he wasn't obsessing about the Greater Good. You were the living symbols of the perfect society to him, one that accepted magical and non-magical — and by extension, metahuman and non-metahuman — as equals, living without stupid secrecy statutes that were shown to have long outlived their usefulness when the Steel Angels were all created in the 1920s!" She then gazed on Regina. "And the Immortals will be happy to know you all are alright."

The Massachusite combat witch blinked. "Carl…?"

The Devonian magical naturalist nodded. "He was there early this morning, escorting Tsukiko-sensei on her monthly visit to see Master Gellert. A lot of the others who were there at the Battle of the Gates — Duncan MacLeod, Robert and Angelina de Valicourt, Erno Jocszak and Alicia Mackenzie — were there, too; this was the first time since the sixty-fifth anniversary of that battle that they all were able to come together without worrying about people hunting their heads. Even Adam Pierson — who was a good friend of David Wisden — also came, as did Amanda Deveraux."

"Where are they now, Luna?" Sǔ asked.

"They're still at Nurmengard. Since it's Holy Ground, they're safe from whatever silly fellow might be out there who'd want to go headhunting."

Groans escaped the others. "_Frau_ Lovegood, that was not funny!" Christine moaned.

"Christine, be assured that I would never joke about something like that."

"Never mind, Chris," Regina cut in. "Do Special Test Nine on me."

The native of Braunschweig in Lower Saxony blinked before she raised her hand towards her beloved friend and whispered something in an archaic dialect of German. A moment later, a beautiful opaque parchment appeared before Christine. Gazing at it, she gaped for a moment before she stared at the American. "What was your last test result?"

"Group 5K. Why?" Regina wondered.

"Well, you're now in Group 9D," Christine reported, which made the native of Plymouth gape in disbelief. "_Lieber Gott_! What the hell happened to you, Regina?!"

"Wait a second!" Sǔ said as she drew her wand and began whispering an incantation.

A moment later, a ghostly parchment appeared before her. "Neuwied Test score for First Sergeant Regina Mitchell of the United States, Salem Witches Institute Mistresses Class of 1933, is 439 points," the Chinese-Briton from Sheffield in South Yorkshire reported.

Lisa drew out her dataPADD to bring up her notepad program. "Okay, got it, Sǔ! Also noting that in the Black Maidens Special Test Nine, First Sergeant Mitchell rates in Group 9D. Regina, can you do a test of your friend here, please?"

"Alright," Regina said as she waved her hand towards Christine. A parchment then appeared before her a moment later. "Group 9G," she reported.

"WHAT?!" the Lower Saxon combat witch exclaimed. "That's almost as powerful as _Frau Majorin_ Raeburn's friend from Québec! How's that possible?!"

"Sǔ, do the Neuwied Test," Qiū ordered. "We can start using that to draw up a comparison chart."

"Right."

Another diagnostic test was done, recording Christine Schultze's Neuwied score at 451 points, which Lisa recorded on her dataPADD. "But how on Earth is that possible?!" Regina then demanded. "We're good, but how could our power boost up like THAT?!"

"Probably the meson in your new bodies' bloodstream."

People turned as Hermione Granger walked into the room, accompanied by Elizabeth Gibbon and Margareta Hecht. Christine automatically turned around and clicked her heels together, bowing her head to her leader and friend. "At ease," the Yorkshire-born leader of the Schwarze Mädchen said with a nod of her head and a smile. "Hermione here did some tests using this new system that bright fellow from Bonn developed some years ago with the rest of us. It appears we're all Class 9s to one extent or another, with Gretta and I at the Class 9L level." As both Christine and Regina gaped in shock, Elizabeth gazed on her new friend. "My Neuwied Test score is 482 points, which is just eighteen points short of Sensei's score. Gretta's is 480 points even." She gazed on Lisa. "Master Unspeakable Turpin, are these scores made public for any reason?"

"No, Brigadier Gibbon. Even if the Neuwied Test is pretty popular, whatever results are made are always treated with all levels of confidentiality." Lisa then smirked. "No matter how much the stalebloods try to make it otherwise!"

Laughter escaped the others from Britain. "I see the descendants of _die Schweine ohne Magie_ we wanted to destroy are still being collective pains in the arse," Margareta breathed out.

"Well, we're on a roll right now even if they're trying to trip us up every chance they can," Hermione noted with a grin before she sighed. "I've got some bad news."

"What?" Qiū demanded.

"Harry sent a message up to me. Raven Malfoy just confirmed that Theo Nott and a tonne of his friends — including Draco! — made an alliance with a group of daywalkers under Adam Sewell's leadership to find a way to kill off all the Avalonians using stolen magic. And yes, I'm as shocked as you are, First Sergeant, on hearing that monster is 'alive,' so to speak," Hermione said as she gave a wide-eyed Regina a knowing look.

"That's why we came up here," Kathy reported. "We got a message from Ariel Goyle about that very same thing."

"Why would they do this, _Frau_ Granger?" Christine asked.

"Because they're afraid that the Avalonians will force-transform all the Terrans into 'crystal-bloods,' thus denying them their primary source of food, Staff Sergeant," the normal-born from West Sussex reported before she smirked. "Which would violate the spirit and the letter of the Earth-Avalon Treaty of Alliance and Friendship signed in March. And that, our wonderful friends will not do under any circumstances as it would be no different than what their former masters did to them for over a century."

"Is this demented son of a bitch in jail?!" Regina immediately demanded.

"Regretfully no, First Sergeant," Hermione apologized before she giggled. "But don't worry about it. You'd think that Draco would do everything to avoid being _**touched**_ by his sister whenever he's in her presence!" she then added, which made the others from Britain laugh. "Their original targets were you and all your sisters; Sewell's friends in Germany discovered you were trapped in that cave on Nurmengardberg some weeks ago and decided they couldn't pass up such an opportunity to snare a lot of magic for their cause." As the Black Maidens amongst them all tensed on hearing that, Hermione smiled. "Pity that they never counted on the Vinur Drekar butting in like she did."

"'Vinur Drekar?'" Qiū asked.

"The Lóng de Péng'yǒu," Sǔ provided.

The older woman nodded in understanding; she didn't care for the Friend of Dragons being called simply "_**her**_" like the _Daily Prophet_ had done right from the beginning, but didn't know the Icelandic term. "What will they do now, _Frau_ Granger?" Margareta then asked. "If they're feeling so desperate to drive our new sisters off Earth, they've got to have some sort of backup plan ready to initiate at a moment's notice."

"You're right about that, Master Staff Sergeant," Hermione stated. "Their new target is Azkaban Prison. Time to strike will be Friday, most likely sometime before dawn to allow them to use their full powers since they won't be as strong when the sun's out." She sighed. "Twenty-two hundred and thirty-seven prisoners — all still with a lot of their magic available to them, even the ones who spent time at Gonebren during Death Eater Season — just sitting there and waiting to be taken. And with just a small Auror force there, it wouldn't take Sewell and his friends long to overpower then and whisk them away."

"What about the Dementors?" Elizabeth demanded.

"Wiped out of existence back in 1997 by a friend of ours when she blew the prison up with a hyper-charged mesonium bomb, Elizabeth," Lisa reported. "The goblins provided a guard force after Azkaban was reopened after the turn of the year in 1998 until our friend devised some interesting technomagic deterrents against break-outs."

"I doubt Aesup thought about stopping vampires," Sǔ mused.

"There may be a way to deal with them."

Eyes locked on Luna. "What do you mean, Luna?" Lisa asked.

"Thanks to Aesup's bomb, all of Azkaban Island is saturated with meson particles in the soil itself," the younger woman reported as her blue-grey eyes sparkled with both playful mischievousness and deadly malice. "And meson is just as deadly to ANY type of vampire as silver is."

"You mean lay a trap for them?" Regina mused as she crossed her arms. "Just like President Lincoln and the Department of Magic laid a trap for the vampire leadership who provoked the Civil War before Lee and Meade fought at Gettysburg in 1863?"

"Exactly," Luna affirmed with a nod. "All we need is to get the prisoners and the Aurors clear of the island before Mister Sewell and his friends come visit, then get Aesup to make another nice bomb to blow up once they're on the island itself."

"Um, Luna, she's out in deep space somewhere right now," Lisa reminded her.

The Devonian magical naturalist blinked before she pouted. "Oh, poo!"

_POP!_

Everyone gasped…before they looked up and gaped as a _**paper owl**_ of all things fluttered over their heads in a lazy orbit just out of people's reach even if all of them save Kathy could use wandless magic to bring it down. As the others stared in shock at such a display of power, Luna giggled with delight. "Oh, my! I was wondering when she was going to do this again!" she said as she held up a hand, palm up.

The fluttering bit of origami came over to land on the outstretched limb…before it morphed into a folded sheet of paper. With that, Luna took it in hand and opened it to gaze on what was there…before she blinked. "Where's the message?"

A line of computer-type print then appeared, relaying words in English. [**I DECIDED TO DO SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT THIS TIME, LADY LUNA. I TRUST ALL IS WELL WITH YOU?**]

Luna gaped before she laughed. "Oh, my! She replicated the Speaking Paper Spell!" she declared, which made the others scramble over to gaze over her shoulders at it. "So why on Earth didn't you come here to talk to us in person?" she then asked as she gazed on the paper. "We're nowhere on Earth, so Lady Negako can't sense you."

[**AFTER I JUST RESCUED YOUR BEAUTIFUL HOSTS THIS MORNING? MUCH THAT I DO UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF LIFE-DEBTS, I CARE NOT TO HAVE THEM SWORN TO ME, MY FRIEND.**]

"Are you the one they call the 'Vinur Drekar?'" Elizabeth asked.

[**INDEED I AM, WISE MISTRESS ELIZABETH. AS THE LADY LUNA AND HER COMPANIONS WILL BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN TO YOU, THE DEMANDS OF GIRI FORBID ME FROM REVEALING WHO I AM TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD IN GENERAL. I HOPE TO CORRECT THAT SOMETIME SOON, BUT I CAN'T SAY WHEN.**]

"She's a practising Zoroastrian, Brigadier," Lisa provided. "What she did was just simply an act of mercy per the tenets of her faith. And she's quite honest about this whole issue that forces her to keep quiet about her name. All the dragons and other magical creatures she's saved over the last several months verify her honesty."

The leader of the Schwarze Mädchen nodded. "Alright, fair enough. So why are you contacting us, Miss? We're beyond grateful for you saving us, but…"

[**MUCH THAT MY PERSONAL BELIEFS MAKE ME ABHOR VAMPIRES ON GENERAL PRINCIPLES, I KNOW THERE ARE MANY GOOD AND DECENT PEOPLE AMONGST THE UNDEAD REGARDLESS OF WHAT TYPE OF VAMPIRE THEY ARE. MASTER HUNTER ABRAHAM'S WONDERFUL TEACHER HENRY STURGES, FOR EXAMPLE, TO SAY THE LEAST OF THE UNDYING WARLORD OF BEAUTIFUL WALLACHIA HIMSELF. NONE THE LESS, WHAT THAT DEGENERATE MONSTER SEWELL AND HIS ALLIES PLAN TO DO CAN'T BE ALLOWED. THEY COULDN'T ACCEPT THE JUDGEMENT OF THE WISE MASTER AS DELIVERED AT THE EDGE OF MASTER ABRAHAM'S AXE DURING THE SCORE AND FOUR. SO BE IT. THEY ALL MUST BE MADE TO UNDERSTAND THAT THEIR KIND WILL NO LONGER BE TOLERATED IN THE NEW SOCIETY MY BELOVED ATARU AND HIS SIBLINGS HELPED CREATE FIVE MONTHS AGONE. THAT, I CAN DO.**]

"Sister, you don't need to do that!" Kathy exclaimed. "You've already warned people about what will soon happen! Let the legal authorities deal with it!"

"We can deal with it!" Regina added. "We destroyed vampires by the cartload back in the war! Since these bastards wanted to steal our magic, we'll burn them alive!"

[**NOBLE MISTRESS REGINA, HAS YOUR BELOVED COMMANDER EVER EXPLAINED TO YOU THE CONCEPT OF THE VENGEANCE OF BLOOD? LAWS CONCERNING THAT ARE _STILL_ IN EFFECT ALL ACROSS EUROPE. AND THE POWER OF MAGIC ITSELF WILL NOT CARE WHAT YOUR BIRTH-STATUS IS.**]

Silence.

More silence.

Still more silence.

And then…

"Oh, Merlin! That's _**perfect**_!" Hermione purred with delight.

"What is that?" Regina asked.

"At Salem, do they painless remove your maidenhead in first year?" Qiū asked.

"Of course they do. Why?"

"Before that became common practice at our various schools, it was always possible to seize virgin witches to use their 'pure' blood for unspeakable rituals, Regina," Margareta explained. "To deter that, magical governments passed laws granting any witch who was so abused in that matter — or relatives of same if the victim died — the right of the Vindictam Sanguinis. It's as devastating in its own way as the Praeda Bellica benediction; Magic Itself — as our delightful friend just indicated — acts as the judge, jury and executioner in this case." She then hummed. "Still, could we…"

"Not the vampires, Master Staff Sergeant."

Eyes locked on Hermione. "Who?" Lisa asked.

"Theo Nott and his friends," the normal-born from West Sussex coldly declared…

* * *

The Isle of Lundy, that moment…

"_**AH-CHOO!**_"

_**To be continued…**_

* * *

**WRITER'S NOTES**

1) The **Vestas V90-3MW** is a three-blade upwind wind turbine generator that uses pitch control and a fifty hertz doubly fed induction generator. As noted in its name, it can produce three megawatts of rated power. The tower holding this particular type of wind turbine normally is eighty metres in height; in Germany, towers for the V90 stand 105 metres. The rotors of the V90 span ninety metres.

2) Translations: **Mugalophobic** — Adjective of **Mugalophobia**, which is a combination of _múgalos_ (literally "field mice") and _phobia_ ("mortal fear") ("Múgalos" was the term used in the Greek _Harry Potter_ translations to represent "muggles"); **Egregia cum Laude** — Literally "with outstanding honour," which is a step above **Summa cum Laude** ("with highest honour") and is applied to students who earned the same grade point average for an academic degree required for the latter honour, but did so while pursuing a more rigorous honours curriculum; **Praeda Bellica** — Spoils of War; **Ariadnian** — The demonym representing something of the independent academic city-state of **Ariadne** on Nerio; **Vindictam Sanguinis** — Vengeance of Blood; **Volksdeutsche** — Literally "racial Germans" (the term **volks** can also mean "folk" and then conveyed a meaning of superiority in both blood and civilization) this was a term used by the Nazi Party to indicate those ethnic Germans who lived in other countries (as specifically defined by Adolf Hitler in a 1938 memorandum, these were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship"); **Caudillo** — Literally translated these days as "leader," this was the title bestowed to **Francisco Franco y Bahamonde** (1892-1975) in his position as dictator of Spain from 1939 until his death (though Franco did proclaim himself as such at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936); **Massachusite** — Traditional demonym for a native of Massachusetts (the official demonym is "**Bay Stater**"); **Tsūshō** — Crystal of Agony; **Krankenhaus** — Literally "house of suffering," this is the German title for a hospital; **Kentigernus** — The Latin name for **Saint Kentigern** (unknown date of birth, died 614), the patron saint of the city of Glasgow who is more commonly known as "Saint Mungo" (as an aside, the namesake of St. Mungo's Hospital is **Mungo Bonham**, a master healer said to have lived from 1560-1659 who was introduced in various Famous Wizarding Cards in the video games based on _Philosopher's Stone_, _Chamber of Secrets_, _Prisoner of Azkaban_ _and Order of the Phoenix_); **Morsmordre Avada Kedavra** — As described above, this is an application of the Killing Curse on the Dark Mark, which (as I also specluated in the _Icemaidens_ fanfics) would effectively kill the Mark's bearer; **Xiánqī** — Literally "my esteemed wife"; **Yuèzǐ** — Short for **Yuèliàng de Háizǐ** ("moon child"), a play-off on Luna Lovegood's given name; **Qiūgōng** — Short for **Qiūtiān de Gōngzhǔ** ("princess of autumn"), a play-off on the given name of Zhāng Qiū/Cho Chang; **Bundesmagieministerium** — Short for **Bundesamt für Magische Angelegenheiten** ("Federal Ministry of Magical Affairs"), the post-1949 West German (and after 1990, all-German) version of the British Ministry of Magic; **Meine Kaiserin** — Literally "My Empress"; **Lieber Gott** — Dear God; **Die Schweine ohne Magie** — Literally "the pigs without magic" (in German, calling someone a _schwein_ is one of the worst insults one can deliver).

3) _Negima_ character notes:

**Emily Sevensheep** and **Beatrix Munroe**, as noted above, became members of the **Mage Knights of Ariadne**; this happened during the "Magical World" story arc in _Negima_. Emily first appeared in the manga story "Magical Girl Yūe" (manga episode #203) while Beatrix appeared in "Magical Girl Major Battle" (manga episode #211). Their being lovers is my invention, by the way.

The actual background story of Negi Springfield's father, the **"Thousand Master" Nagi Springfield**, was never properly explained in the manga series; all that was told about him is based on a lot of biased speculation on the parts of people such as **Evangeline McDowell** and others.

4) _Harry Potter_ character notes:

**Kieran Harper** (his given name is my invention, based on the actor that would have portrayed him) is a minor character from _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince_ who was the reserve seeker on the Slytherin Quidditch team. The scenes from the film including him were cut in the final edit.

The final fate of **Sally-Anne Perks** was never discussed in the novels. She was part of the class list that JKR devised before writing _Philosopher's Stone_ and was mentioned at the Sorting scene in that novel. However, in _Order of the Phoenix_, she was never called up to perform her OWL examinations. In both the _Icemaidens_ series and in the universe of this story, I make Sally-Anne a normal-born native of Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire north of the Forest of Dean, the daughter of a forester and a housewife, both of which are also officers in the Territorial Army. Of course, it was because of Sally-Anne's magic — as noted in _The Icemaidens and the Philosopher's Stone_ — that penetrated the veil set up around Rhosan Green, which is where she met her future lover **Libera Meretrice**. In the universe of this story, however, Libera was attending classes at Meridiana when Sally-Anne was invited to Hogwarts; their encounter, as noted above, occurred during the latter's OWL year there.

**Alice Tolipan** and **Luca Caruso** were both people who signed the contract that saw them become members of the **Defence Association** AKA **Dumbledore's Army** in the movie version of _Order of the Phoenix_. Their house affiliations were not noted in the movie; their being Slytherins is my invention.

5) **The Viscountcy of Dengie** (Lamicho Hundings) is named after the **Dengie Peninsula** on the North Sea coast of Essex about fifty-five kilometres east-northeast of London. Lamicho's hometown of **Bradwell** — the town's full name is **Bradwell-on-Sea** is on near the peninsula's tip, where the **River Blackwater** flows into the North Sea.

6) **Monkshood** is one of the many names applied to a genus of plants known scientifically as _Aconitum_…or normally as **Aconite**. Plants of this particular genus are also sometimes known as **Wolf's Bane**. These plants are chiefly native to the mountainous parts of the Northern Hemisphere, growing in the moisture-retentive but well-draining soils of mountain meadows. While aconite has been used in traditional Oriental medicine — which Rose Potter would have learned thanks to Yomigawa Tsukiko — these types of plants are also very poisonous.

7) Fans of Harry Turtledove's 1992 alternate history novel _The Guns of the South_ (ISBN 0-345-37675-7) will recognize the name of the magical marshal Abraham Lincoln spoke of when Harry Potter was visiting him: **Mollie Bean** (unknown dates of birth and death). In real life, Mollie disguised herself as a man and fought with the **47th Regiment, North Carolina Infantry** for two years and was wounded twice in battle; it is suspected — but not confirmed — that she was at the **Battle of Gettysburg** on 1-3 July 1863. She was captured by Union troops on 17 February 1865 and later imprisoned in **Castle Thunder** in downtown Richmond, having been declared "manifestly crazy" and was later accused as a spy. The _Richmond Whig_ later reported in its 20 February 1865 edition that other members of the 47th knew of Mollie and insinuated that she may have had sexual relations with one or more of them. Neither assertion was, however, based on any concrete evidence, Bean's own testimony or that of any other soldier in her unit. Those assertions, no doubt, influenced Harry Turtledove when he fleshed out her character as she appeared in _TGoTS_; there, she claimed she was a prostitute before disguising herself as "Melvin Bean" and joining Company "D" of the 47th (known commonly as the **Castalia Invincibles**) before Gettysburg.

8) The **Mistresses Class** at the **Salem Witches Institute** is the equivalent of the NEWT Class at Hogwarts. The equivalent of those who leave Hogwarts with only their OWLs at Salem would be the **Graduates Class**.

9) I introduced both the **Nŏksbae** ("soul boat") and **Nŏkspotchep'um** ("soul replica") concepts in _The Icemaidens and the Philosopher's Stone_. Note that in the cases of Korean syllables that end in dual consonants as written in han'gŭl, only one of those syllables is normally pronounced. When it comes to the **ks** combination, the "s" is not pronounced.

10) The name of Harry Potter's would-be girlfriend from his fifth year, **Cho Chang**, was rendered in the Mandarin translations of the novels as **张秋**, read **Zhāng Qiū**. The family name literally means "archer" and is one of the most popular Chinese clan names. The given name means "autumn." However, it should be noted that Cho's English-based name (according to the Harry Potter Wikia) might have been derived from **惆怅**, which is read "**chóuchàng**" and combines the terms "distressed" and "disappointed."

11) The German rank title name of **Stabsfeldwebel** literally means "Staff Sergeant." In the German Army, this is applied to someone that is equivalent to a master warrant officer/chief petty officer 2nd class in the Canadian Forces and has the NATO rank code of OR-8. Note that the rank title Hermione Granger used for Margareta Hecht here, "Master Staff Sergeant," is a near-direct translation of the German rank name **Oberstabsfeldwebel**, which has the NATO rank code of OR-9 and is equal to a Canadian Forces chief warrant officer/chief petty officer 1st class.

12) The **Speaking Paper Spell** mentioned by Luna here is my name for a magical version of text messaging using paper. I base this concept on the practice of using holograms with letters sent between mages in _Negima_.


End file.
